TBR could never understand why I made such bad grades and constantly called me stupid because of it. Hmmm... Let's see. We were constantly moving, even in the middle of a semester
and she never once even tried to help me with homework. TBR, who has a BA from Tulsa University. My brother The Prince apparently didn't need any help because his grades were outstanding. It was entirely evident that I did need some help outside of the home, which was ultimately one of the reasons she sent me off to boarding school. I thank God every day that she did send me off, since I probably would have otherwise turned out just like her. Still, it was many years before I learned that most kids my age grew up in loving, caring families where their lives were carefully planned out with parents that cared about the future of their children.My brother and I both knew how to play every card game known to Americans and could both mix a mean Bloody Mary by the time we were each eight years old. We were also often sent to the neighborhood grocery on foot, to buy her Vogue cigarettes. We honestly had no idea that all other children in our world... were not doing these things. Neither one of us ever stayed anywhere long enough to have really close friends, so we didn't see how a lot of other people lived. Except, of course, the TBR's constantly changing array of friends.
Her friends consisted mostly of people of questionable professions, bookies, hit men, Oklahoma Senators, restaurant/bar owners, sports writers, oil men, pro golfers, stockbrokers, Jr. Leaguers, hairdressers, lawyers, pro football players and the list goes on. Mostly, they were people who liked The Night Life with Martinis and Jazz, like TBR. These people really went to Vegas a lot, and I had plenty of silver dollars that she'd brought back to us after her trips. As long as the friends were fun, they stayed around. Otherwise TBR dumped them and moved on to more entertaining new friends. No one else was allowed to have as much drama in their lives as she did, so she needed lots of good listeners. Sort of like how I always felt. She wished she could have moved on to another daughter when I turned out to be such a disappointment. Can you imagine? How can anyone wind up so completely shallow?
Anyway, she and her friends had lots of after hours places they haunted as well, so we were often awakened to come out of our rooms to meet so-and-so at the oddest hours... into the wee hours of the morning. This was also totally condusive to to all those excellent grades I wasn't making. I didn't realize it at the time I went off to Ursuline, but those nuns saved my life. They taught me so many more of the important things in life that I would never have learned at home.
Back in the 1960's in Oklahoma, gambling was illegal. It might still be illegal, I don't have a clue. Anyway, it was hot as a firecracker back then and I know there were many times when her friends were running numbers out of our house. They had to move around a lot. You know, when I saw the movie Casino with DeNiro and Sharon Stone, it reminded me a lot of those days.
One of the guys that used to drive me to school was a Harvard educated lawyer and another was a hit man (actually, I believe that he wore many hats in his business) for certain organizations. TBR always liked to make sure that we met a wide variety of people from a colorful array of professions. Maybe she thought it made us more well rounded than Sunday School. In a way, it did have an impact on us both. I'm a very cautious gambler to this day. I also hate sloppy drunks who insist on telling tasteless jokes. I can spot a *tell* or a *con* a mile away. I can usually tell when a person is lying. I learned to never give a sucker an even break and to never play the numbers. Unfortunately, during all of this education I was receiving at home, I have a funny feeling I was supposed to be learning fractions and how to conjugate verbs at school.
When we lived in Tulsa briefly, I did make the swim team, but we moved away before I could ever get to compete. Until Aspen, we had never lived long enough in any one place that I was ever able to learn a sport, so I always thought I was not a sporty girl. Until I was introduced to skiing, at any rate. Snow skiing remains the love (sport) of my life (with water skiing coming in at a red hot second) and will be until I take my last breath. It still makes me feel so free when I'm screaming down the slopes like a teenager.
I realize that some of the tales of TBR are difficult to believe by those of you who grew up in *normal* families, but I assure you that every bit of it is true. Some of it is so bizarre that I won't even be able to tell you. However, I will shock and amaze you from time to time with some of the more interesting stories about her. She was always a real piece of work. At least I can't say that I didn't have an interesting life.
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