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Barbara liked to teach me things. My dad says she potty trained me, but I should probably ask my mom to confirm that story. I do remember the time she brought me into her bedroom where she had gently laid a pair of underwear on her bed. She told me that she thought she had her period. She continued by telling me it wasn’t like the period at the end of a sentence. She then pointed to the underwear. There on the top of her panties was a little red fuzz ball. You could barely see it. Later she told me that she discovered that she hadn’t had her period because the fuzz ball had moved.

Another time she brought me into the bathroom and demonstrated how to shave my legs. I gave it a try after she left by shaving one line along the front of my leg. I decided that I wasn’t interested in shaving and put the razor away without shaving the rest of my leg. A short while later we were in Tennessee and Barbara noticed a short patch of hair on my leg. She teased me mercilessly, but promised she’d stop if I’d just admit that I had tried to shave. I refused to admit it and eventually she gave up.

The summer before I was to enter Jr. High my sister approached me about my handwriting. She told me that if I was to be “popular,” I’d need to work on my handwriting. She gave me a paper with a list of samples of “popular” handwriting and advised me to learn one of them. I don’t know how long I spent practicing, but I do remember working on one or two of them.

The last lesson I can remember is when I was taking my first French class in high school. We both had Mrs. Hamp as our French teacher. She told us that we could get extra credit by learning a sentence in French and then telling her. Barbara taught me two sentences which supposedly meant “I am Kathleen. I am smart” what they really meant was “I am Kathleen, I am silly.” Mrs. Hamp laughed when I told her I was silly and taught me how to call Barbara a “pighead” in French.