Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127712 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
I wouldn’t know, Officer. I was too busy looking at his dick.
Should I ask him to pull his pants down?
I stifle a giggle, then chastise myself for being foolish like this.
It’s not funny, Nova. What you just did…
I shake my head as I walk.
What I just did was so typical of me.
It’s not true. Not anymore, anyway. But it’s hard to shake that feeling that I am still the trailer park slut. And fine, OK, maybe I did enjoy teasing the boys a little bit too much as a teenager, but that was a decade ago now. I’m a grown woman. One who has barely dated at all since first-year grad school five years ago. I’m a frickin’ scientist, for God’s sake. I’m working for the most prestigious underground scientific institution in the world.
Even that makes me giggle.
My life, man. It’s so weird.
I really did grow up in a trailer park. Both of my parents were disabled. My mother had a crooked spine—which I know the medical term for now, but didn’t for all of my childhood. She had to stop working when I was about four. The pain was too much. My father was a soldier. Enlisted, of course. He came back from the war kinda messed up and missing a hand.
But he got better. He settled down. Managed to do it without painkillers or alcohol. And my mom, who was on painkillers most of the time, she was just one of those happy people. She didn’t move around much, but she talked, and talked, and talked. And this talking was in the form of stories.
She read aloud constantly. I once told her about books on tape. Audiobooks, or whatever they’re called now. I even got her one. A Stephen King. We listened to it over the summer I turned fourteen. I cooked and cleaned the house and she ran a constant commentary in the background. I don’t like the voice. Why did he stress that word and not that one? Was that a sniffle? Why is he talking so slow? Why is he talking so fast? That’s not how you pronounce it.
“Ma,” I used to sigh. “Just listen to the story!”
“I read it better.”
She did too. I have to admit that. She changed her voice for different characters, and pronounced everything right, and listening to my mom tell stories is probably my most solid memory of my childhood. She could’ve been one of those professional voiceover people. If she had been born just a decade later, maybe… maybe her life could’ve been more than it was.
But here’s the thing about us—we didn’t mind our life. It was a good life. Maybe we had more bad breaks than some, but we didn’t have more bad breaks than most. And I think that put us ahead.
We never listened to another audiobook after that one. Ma just went back to reading. She had a nice wheelchair—a gift from some club, I think—and my dad and I used to take her on long walks through the city. And she would read to us as we walked.
My dad was a garbage man once the war memories faded. He worked that job until he died last year. But he didn’t mind the work. He once told me, “Nova, sometimes you just need a task. It’s nice to have a career, but sometimes you just need a task.”
That’s what collecting garbage was for him. Busywork. He’d had enough excitement, I guess. And I have to agree. I love what I do. I love that I made it. I even have fond memories of doing all the work it took to get here. But from the moment I decided I wanted to do science I have been driven towards this goal.
I gave up everything to be this woman I am now.
I went to college out of state, I did work-study, I lived in the library and the labs, I did summer internships, I volunteered for every single research trial my professors were doing in their own private labs. I gave up my weekends, and my social life, and all my other expectations.
So there are times, when I take a breath, that I look back and wonder… what would life be like if I didn’t have this kind of stress? What would life be like if I didn’t need a 4.0 on my transcripts? If I didn’t need results from my experiments? If I didn’t need to publish my data?
What would my life be like if I was simply doing a task?
And here’s where I land… my life would be my childhood.
My parents, feeling satisfied—or maybe blessed is the better word—about life and their place in it. A small space to call my own. A sense of safety and gratitude.
It’s not a bad way to spend your time.