My 15th year........

 In my 15th year it was 1983.  The Mayfair Market was the meeting place to find parties or hop in cars to cruise Main St.  I remember my best friend Lori and I would go to Dairy Queen and walk downtown until we found cute boys and we would catch a ride for awhile but usually we would all just be bundles of hormones and smile, yell at each other and run up to cars to give a boy our phone number if he asked for it.  We used to go to King Skate Country every Friday night because there really wasn't much else to do.  The really bad kids hung out at Circus Circus so that became a spot that was not a frequent hang out.  The summer of my 15th year, I started "going out" with a boy named Pat, more out of convenience than feelings and for some reason got pulled into a world of mental and physical abuse.  He was kicked out of his house for drugs and dropping out of school and my mom took him in, not knowing who he really was , Hell, I don't think I even knew.  I was young and dumb and had a broken heart over a boy named Eddie who repeatedly cheat on me, so it was a way to get over him.  It was also a learning process.  I was already a pretty tough kid, growing up in neighborhoods and with circumstances that created Bubba, but being punched, having your hair pulled  and head butted by a boy was a new thing for me.  It finally ended with a violent fight in the bathroom because I broke up with him and he tried to flush my head into the toilet.  Back in the 80's, big metal Boombox's where all the rage and I had one sitting on the back of my toilet.  I remember somehow grabbing it and hitting him in the head with it and once I got up, I swung it as hard as I could and hit him in the head again.  He finally got the point and went out to his Mini truck to leave but I wasn't done yet and jumped on the hood of his car and kicked his windshield in.  That day, the final break up, he was on drugs, cocaine I think was his drug of choice, and drove down Dandini Blvd. to go to his mom's house  where he flipped his truck.  I went to see him in ICU to say my final goodbye and break up for good, but his other girlfriend Donna had come down from Los Gatos, Ca. to be with him, hmm lucky girl.  Probably just as well, I guess I got my closure, but he never did.  Another day another story, but Jay and I have had the "pleasure" of running into him from time to time since he got out of prison for beating his wife and mother-in-law with a cast iron skillet.  Nice guy.  Learned a tough lesson at 15 and my daughter wonders why I tell her to enjoy being a kid and not try to grow up so fast.