Since graduation: Graduated from Huntingdon College; lived in Missouri for two years while I taught and went to graduate school; left school after my mother died in 1984 and came back to Montgomery; got married in 1985; taught at Alabama State University from 1985 to 1992; had two children; went back to school full-time at the University of Alabama (commuted to Tuscaloosa every day); returned to Alabama State in 1995 to direct the University Honors Program; had another child in 98;was granted tenure; left ASU and went to teach Am. Lit. at Huntingdon College in 2002; won UA's outstanding dissertation of the year award; was named department chair; was granted tenure at HC; celebrated my 24th wedding anniversary and sent my second child off to college this year; still writing and teaching. More later. I have a lunch date with my husband so I only have time to summarize the last thirty years of my life in about 1000 characters. That's really hard, by the way.

Once, we had a substitute teacher in either Latin or French class. I think it was probably French. The woman was very old. . . very old, which means she was probably around 45. I don't know, but she couldn't see very well. So, people in my class--I won't say who (actually I can't remember who) begin to ease to the back, one desk at a time, and then proceed to climb out of the window of the first floor classroom. The room was across from the lunchroom and right next to a main doorway, so the wayward students would simply walk back into the building and saunter nonchalantly into the classroom. The poor clueless teacher kept asking, "Where have you been?" each time someone walked back in. The usual answer was, "Oh, I just had to go to the bathroom," or "I really needed a drink of water?" Finally, after the sixth or seventh person had walked through the door and just as yet another student slipped out the window, the exasperated, blind, old teacher said, "Look. I don't mind you all getting water, but you need to ask me first before you leave the class!" I'm not saying I ever participated in anything like this, but I did witness it.