Growing Up Sandy Part 2

Good Girl Lost

Remember those early teen years where the whole world lay before you full of hope and opportunity? Here's what I remember about that time....oh and that's me in the middle in about 1976 in Manhattan. That might be the Manhattan Library. I have no idea what the sign was for.

Anyway, as a young teenager, I really was such a good kid in my heart like most of us are. Yet this good girl was starving for....well, anything, everything and more.

Sound familiar at all? Looking back now, I had plenty of friends and plenty of good times yet, always totally aware of my perception of never truly fitting in. Always taking scary chances living out risky behaviors in hopes that something would fill the unidentifiable hollowness. Like so many kids, painfully, I always wondered if what I was saying, looked like, or doing was acceptable. Acceptance; the word that covers it all...and in the end that chronic need changed everything God designed. For a time but, not forever.

I clearly remember back in the early 70’s in Jr High I would be taken out of some classes and moved to a “special” class. Back in those days, Special Ed was just starting to take shape. Mortifying was an understatement. How didn’t anyone notice a kid who was actually quite smart, but needed to be taught in a different way? Had I been taught correctly from the beginning, well why even go there, that’s not how the story went. It has taken me 56 years to understa