T.D. Thompson, Author

Are you wondering what Retro Girl is all about?  Here's a sample:

CHAPTER ONE

            Horrible though my day had been, home-schooling, a nightmare scenario that had been threatened more than once over the past couple of years when my days at school seemed to threaten my skinny grip on reality and scare my parents, would be even worse.  24/7 with Mom leading the so-called class.  And a class of what? Cute boys? Girls I’d like to hang out with? Interesting persons I just might learn something useful from?  None of the above.  Me, that’s what! Just me. And Mom, of course.  I shudder to think. 

            But when my English teacher, Mrs. Collins, who up until now had been firmly rooted in the pre-Cambrian era, came back from her Mazatlan vacation where some irresponsible but, I’m sure, well-meaning IT oaf taught her to surf the web and use email, I began thinking staying home with Mom might not be a complete negative. 

            Mrs. C., normally gray and almost invisible, is now all gnarly and computer-literate and forcing the whole class to start a blog.  Sigh.  And, not only that, but Facebook her as a ‘friend’, so that we can message our blogs to her inbox, thus maintaining a semblance of privacy.  Double sigh.  It’s so demeaning being coerced by those in the position to do the coercing, to follow the herd this way. 

            And, plus, she’s got a picture of herself on there.  I checked. She’s wearing a huge flowered hat and she’s sitting on a beach somewhere and I am only grateful there isn’t a picture of whomever was actually taking her picture.  Probably some skinny old bald guy in plaid shorts and black dress socks. Gross.

            According to her, this exercise will ‘unleash creativity’ and therefore it won’t be marked, but used simply as a ‘tool’, whatever that might mean. 

The blog must be personal and descriptive. Sentence structure has to be complete. It must be about something affecting our lives.  Right now!  This very minute!  It must be dated and it must be told in our own words.  And it starts tonight. 

Facebook: Between you and M. Collins

01-06-Yearofourlordwhatever: HOMEWORK-BLOGGER UNDER PROTEST  aka H-BUP  (I just didn’t have the energy to think up a good title for this blog. Sorry Mrs. C., but, meh.)

Please Note - Registering Protest: It’s hard to ignore the fact that you, Mrs. Collins, in addition to random unknown others who may have access to this blog, will be reading my innermost thoughts.  Hence I must insist Mrs. Collins, and whomever else is reading, that I write this under protest.  And that although you have stated, have promised, that our fellow classmates will not be allowed access to this blog I remain unconvinced which may in turn influence my choice of topics in this blog. Just saying.

You told us to describe our families for you.  Brace yourself.  And now, let the blogging begin:

*Ahem*… I have a mother.  She’s insane.  I have a father.  He’s barely there. And then there’s me.  That’s my family. As far as things affecting me today?  Right now! This very minute!  There isn’t anything.  I live in a void.  End of blog.

Whoa.  Who knew she even had any idea of how to access Facebook, let alone alone actually respond and then respond so bluntly.  She put a smiley at the end to soften the whole thing and make like she’s my friend, but I’m not that gullible.  It was there so she could practice being a computer geek. She thinks icons are fun. She wants more details.  She wants a window into our lives.  She wants to insert her presence into our innermost depths. Or so it seems, but anyway she definitely wants more.  And that’s just what she’s gonna get.

Facebook: Between you and M. Collins

01-08-Yearofourlordwhatever

Okay, then, you said you wanted more detail, so here goes.  My mother talks to fairies.  Not the gay kind you might be thinking of, but the ones who live in gardens and forests, under leaves and between the gnarled roots of ancient trees.  The kind who wear dresses and hats made from the petals of flowers, and pants sewn from the long deep-green leaves of lily of the valley. 

When it rains they balance a big oak-leaf umbrella over their heads for protection.  When it’s really hot, they prop a purple and yellow columbine flower on top of their heads as a shield against the sun. They gather the satiny red petals of poppies and sew them together to make dancing skirts.  The tiniest petals from marigolds become patches for the knees of worn out children’s clothing. 

For transportation purposes they harness bees as horses, flying around in a blur of fairy activity with their buzzing steeds, hair flying in the wind, sun glinting off the dewdrops in their hair. Or at least, that’s how I see it and how I was describing it to her this afternoon.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom snorted.  “Talking to fairies?  That’s not what I do!”  Chiding me is one of her main hobbies.  She ‘tsk’s with the best of them.

“I mean,” she continued, “maybe there are fairies.  Who’s to say?  There could be, I suppose, and lots of people do believe in them.”  She caught me rolling my eyes at that point and stated triumphantly, “Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies and sprites!  You know, the guy who wrote all the detective stories.  You saw some of them on t.v. with Dad.  About that detective…and his friend… ” She trailed off.  Mom tends to get a little ‘absent’ once in a while and our conversations are often like this.  One-sided and a little hard to follow.

“He did!”, she exclaimed when I refused to rejoice with her. “And lots of other well-known people do, too.  I just can’t think of their names at this exact moment.” She gave me an appraising look and then said, “But honestly, Ariadne, this imagination of yours really needs to find an outlet.  Why don’t you go do something useful?” 

That’s it for today, Mrs. Collins!  Ttyl.  

Facebook: Between M. Collins and you

01-13-Yearofourlordwhatever

So, evidently that wasn’t quite enough to fulfill my contractual obligations to this blog and the hope that I will pass English 10.  You seemed to think my description of my home life was a little ‘flighty’.  Therefore, I carry on: 

When Mom begins describing the voices she hears, the ones that rule her life, I basically do all I can to tune her out.  She’s totally old as you would know, since you’ve met her at parent-student-teacher interviews.  She says she’s thirty-nine, but I’ve never seen concrete proof and personally, I think she’s a lot older.  Numerical age means nothing anyway, as she keeps pointing out to me in an attempt to prove that no matter how ancient she is she’s still ‘hip’, which only goes to prove my point, since ‘hip’ is something she’s not now and has probably never been. 

Here’s the real proof that age is only a number and means nothing: I’m fifteen, if you don’t get too technical about actual birthdates and so on, and I have more sense than she does.  Scary isn’t it? 

I’m only jerking her chain when I talk to her about her crazy ideas, but she takes it all very seriously.  She points out that her “gifts” as she calls them are what put meals on the table and shoes on our feet.

            “Why can’t we just use seedpods for shoes,” I asked her innocently.  “Why can’t we simply gather leaves and sew them together with threads made from spider webs?” 

That’s the point when I saw her actually having to hold herself back from smacking me*.  The only thing that stopped her is her conviction that whatever happens in this life is something she’ll have to come to terms with in the next.  She’s determined to keep her karma as clean as possible because the last thing she wants is to have to deal with me again in her next life.  It’s such a laugh, really, because she’s as trapped by her beliefs, weird as they are, as anyone else is.  She’s not free. 

* Footnote:  Just so you know, Mrs. C., Mom never would actually ‘smack’ me. She’s a keen non-violence advocate, if you know what I mean: the kind of person who’d rather talk you to death than beat you to death.  So, in other words, please don’t call the cops or social workers or anything.  The violence implied in the above sentence is strictly there for color, so you don’t get bored reading all this junk.       

            There.  If that doesn’t make Mrs. C. happy, then I have no idea what will.  It’s all there.  Highly Personal Stuff!  Gory Details About My Disturbed Home Life! Things I prefer people to not know about me and yet, things that aren’t all that awful.  There’s no way I’m trusting anyone, let alone a teacher, with the real stuff that goes on in my life.  There’s no way I’m describing to her how although my mother sees herself as a free spirit, flitting around the world, reading people’s auras and cleansing their energies, she’s basically full of crap.

            I’m the free one.  I’m the one with my whole life ahead of me once I’m old enough to actually leave this insane asylum behind and be on my own.  I’m the one with the potential of finding real friends and a life outside this goofy house, once I manage to locate someone interesting who can accept me under my own terms, since I have absolutely no intention of groveling to anyone or of changing in any way.  I’m the one who swings out the door every morning to a world miles removed from this place.

Actually, my life is mostly outside this house since bringing my friends over, once I actually get some of course, and then having my Mom wander out in her ankle bracelets and clinging long skirts is not something I want to subject them to. 

Nobody else’s mother wears tie-dyed draping skirts that whisper over the ground, long dangling earrings festooned with beads and feathers, hennaed hair down to her waist and bare feet with toe rings and ankle bracelets no matter how cold it is outside.

            Nobody else’s mother has teary-eyed strangers tapping at her door day and night, arriving with arms full of invisible psychological baggage and questions about their past and future, which they pay her to answer for them.  Nobody else’s mother has a mob of invisible chatty spirits hanging around the house, whom she confides in, laughs with and asks advice from.  Nobody’s! 

            And none of it is anything I intend to go around sharing with the regular kids I go to school with.   Being a loser is bad enough, being a loser with a crazy mother is even worse.