On May 10th, 1986, I woke up in my own apartment with my life starting anew. I had graduated from college. I never had to worry about classes again. It was a huge burden off my mind.
I remembered it was very cold that morning. Loyd and his girlfriend left my house early to get back to College Station near Amarillo. Mom and Dad would be coming up later so that Dad could get my car fixed. I also had to work at the station. Mom and Dad came up just in time to drive me over.
A couple of weeks before I had moved into the apartment, I showed it to my parents. While they liked it, my Mom said, "We need to paint this apartment." I told her it was fine and that it didn't need to be painted. While I'll admit that it looked a little drab, I really didn't want to start my new life surrounded by paint fumes. A few days later, Mom called me and told me they were going to buy some paint. I told her that I was going to be the one living there, not her and she didn't need to do anything.
An odd thing happened while I was at work. It started snowing. Never in my life up to this point had I ever seen it snow in May in New Mexico. The really bad thing was that my Dad had to fix my car outside in the snow. None of the snow stuck to the ground, but it was still very bizarre.
When I got back home from work, I found that Mom had COMPLETELY REARRANGED EVERYTHING! On top of this, they hung a plant from the ceiling. Because they didn't paint the apartment, I didn't get mad at them. However, I made it pretty clear that I was disappointed. Mom said the plant only needed to be watered once a week. I was really not liking the idea that I was being forced to care for a living thing. Eventually, Loyd took that plant to his dorm room at ENMU.
After they left, I was finally alone in the apartment. I didn't do anything special that night. I probably went out to get something to eat.
The next day, Loyd came back from College Station. I wasn't expecting this, but he wound up staying with me for a few days. Loyd and I went to Wal-Mart, which was located at the mall across the street. We bought some dishes, a frying pan and a spatula. (Grandma Bend gave me a lot of leftover silverware, a coffee pot and a broken toaster. It still toasted the bread, but you had to manually pop it up after about a minute. I never drank coffee.)
Then, we went out to the grocery store to buy some food, since I obviously couldn't afford to eat out every night. Mom had made a list of the foods she thought I should buy. Loyd looked at the list and saw that it was all food that she wanted to eat. He said that I didn't need to buy bacon because it was rather expensive. We just bought the things we thought I needed. We bought some pork chops and made those for dinner that night.
After we were done eating, we started cleaning up the kitchen. We washed the dishes and I started cleaning the stove. I lifted up the burner pad with my thumb and index finger. SSSSSSSSSSS! I JUST COOKED MY FINGERS! I didn't feel any pain at first, but knew right away I needed to get my fingers under cold running water. After a few seconds, I started feeling the hurt and it would just not go away. I sent Loyd down to Allsup's to buy me a cup of ice with no soda. He came back and while the ice helped to ease the pain, it all melted after about an hour. I still needed to go to work the overnight shift at the station that night, so I sent him down to buy a whole bag of ice. I had a metal bowl to put the ice in. I wasn't able to get any sleep before the shift, so I took the bag of ice and the bowl to work.
I had to run my show using my one good hand while the bad hand rested in the ice. Around 3am, I noticed I couldn't feel any more pain. The pain never bothered me again the rest of the night. I was able to go home after my shift and go to sleep. I felt bad about what happened, because it kind of meant I wasn't capable of taking care of myself now that I was "grown up."
I had a funny coincidence with those dishes I bought that first weekend. After a few weeks of living on my own, I broke one of the four large plates. (I REALLY couldn't take care of myself.) About eight years later, I was moving out of an apartment I shared with a roommate. (His name is Jakd.) I was clearing my stuff out of the kitchen shelves and putting them in a box. I packed the dishes I had first purchased at Wal-Mart. Jakd reached in the shelf and pulled out a couple of plates. He asked, "Aren't these yours?" The design was the same. I said, "Yeah, they are. Why would I have only grabbed one and put it in the box?" I realized I had already put my three plates in the box. These were different plates that used to belong to his old roommate! I didn't see the point of tracking her down to give them back, so I just kept them. I now had one plate more than I started with.
It's too bad I wasn't lucky enough to have that happen with the glasses from the same set that I broke.
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