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I had been doing dry runs with my Raggedy Ann & Andy lunchbox at the kitchen table, practicing unscrewing and screwing the lid back onto the thermos. I was not super successful at getting it on properly.

The main reason I was so excited about school was that I would finally learn to read.

I already loved books and had many from my Disney collection memorized—my favorite, Pinocchio and the Whale. I’d been asking my mom to teach me to read because I was completely reliant on her to read to me, and she always told me I would learn when I went to school.

I was the sixth of six children, after she’d lost her first in a tragic accident, so maybe by the time she got to me, she just didn’t have it in her. And parenting was different in the ’70s. There was no helicoptering. I don’t remember my mom playing with me. EVER. And I know I’m not alone in this. ’70s parents didn’t play with their kids. Are you kidding?

I was beyond excited to start school.

And beyond ill-equipped.

My birthday missed the school cutoff by one day. So my dad did what any dad would do.

He had my birth certificate changed.

How, you might ask? I’m imagining some White-Out and a friend who was a notary.

And just like that, I was enrolled in first grade. Never mind kindergarten. I didn’t need that!

I was smart!

We lived in a very rural area, on a dirt road, with no neighbors in sight. I hadn’t grown up playing with other kids. My next-oldest sibling was eight years older than me and the only one still living at home.

She tolerated me at best.

Cut to my first day of school.

As excited as I’d been about starting, the reality was much different.

I was terrified.

I cried all morning in my first-grade classroom, no matter how kind my teacher, Mrs. Hall, was.

I cried at lunch.

Our nice lunch lady, Mrs. Shoebaugh—not that bitch Mrs. Phillips, who looked like Beulah Ballbricker from Porky’s—tried to comfort me by asking if I’d like to sit next to “this nice little girl” across from me at the fold-up cafeteria table.

The nice little girl was staring at me with wide eyes as I cried uncontrollably.

I nodded yes, knowing it wouldn’t matter.

So Mrs. Shoebaugh moved me across the table next to that poor, uncomfortable little girl.

I’ve already mentioned that I had issues with that stupid fucking bitch of a thermos. I mean, come on! I can’t have been the only 5-year old to have been challenged! Adults with full dexterity to screw on complicated thermos lids aren’t carrying their Raggedy Ann & Andy lunchbox into the office. They could have designed it a bit better for us kiddos—just sayin’.

As I walked back to my classroom after lunch, my Raggedy Ann & Andy lunchbox was trailing milk down the hallway because—surprise!—I had not gotten the thermos lid screwed on properly.

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I call this an eargasm.

At a check up, my doctor looked into my ears and exclaimed, “You have the clearest ear canals I have ever seen.”

Vindicated.

Do you have any weird grooming habits? Share the in the comments! 🖤

The BTS gives you everything underneath it — what it was actually like being a very young twelve among kids who were already living in a world I hadn’t entered yet, what I understood even the…

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The cherry almond of Vidal Sassoon — sophisticated, a little grown-up, the shampoo that meant business. The tart green apple of Salon Selectives, which came in levels and made choosing a shampoo feel like an actual achievement. The orange sherbet of Jhirmack, which was what the cool older girls used and therefore what we all wanted. The soft, soapy musk of Finesse, which had a commercial that made it feel genuinely aspirational. I remember ALL of these hair commercials that made us believe that we were just one shampoo away from the perfect life.

And then there was Perma Soft—sweet and perfectly perfumed. It’s the one I used most consistently when I, like everyone else in the 90s, got my already wavy hair, permed regularly.

This is the final installment of my four-part Oh Nostalgia shampoo series. It’s been a journey through the drugstore aisle—in my case, Hills department store—thanks for coming along!

Vote for your favorite in the poll below. And if your holy grail didn’t make any of these four lists — tell me in the comments. I have a feeling there are some important ones we missed. 🖤

I believe my dad truly intended to protect me from harm. To believe otherwise would be to believe he didn’t give a shit. He was just a man, confined by his own limitations and blind spots. Before my mom died, she managed all things on the kid front. Afterward, I became the child whose life he was most involved in. That meant I also carried the weight of his decisions.

This is just one small story about one week in my life. Other choices he made still ripple into my life as I push back against their collateral damage to the fragile, sensitive heart of childhood me.

This is a story about church camp.

I had gone to sleepaway church camp the year before and had a great experience. And let’s not confuse church camp with VBS—Vacation Bible School. If you know, you know.

I was never a kid who minded being away from home. I never left a sleepover early because I was homesick or missed my own bed, though I’d watched plenty of friends abandon sleepovers at my house in the middle of the night.

My best church friend was a girl we’ll call Sharon. Not because there’s anything scandalous to protect—I’m simply choosing a pseudonym. This story paints her only as she deserves to be painted: a genuinely good person.

Sharon was about two years older than I was, though we usually ended up together in Sunday School because of how the classes were grouped. The previous summer we’d gone to camp together. Breakfast in the giant A-frame that always smelled like burnt toast. Arts and crafts. Swimming at dusk in the pool perched on the side of a steep hill. Campfires and singalongs. All your childhood Christian favorites.

This year, because of our age difference, Sharon was moving up to the older kids’ camp while I was supposed to stay behind with the younger group.

My dad must have thought I needed to know at least one person. So he pulled some strings—as he always did—and somehow got me registered for the older camp with Sharon.

The trouble actually began before I ever got there.

The packing list explained that we needed to reserve a hiking pack. My church camp sat in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania, and this wasn’t an arts-and-crafts kind of week. We were going to hike a section of the Appalachian Trail.

Now is probably a good time to mention that I was a fat kid.

There are gentler words—chubby, heavy, overweight—but let’s be honest. When you’re the size I was at twelve, your peers aren’t fooled by softer language. I was a fat kid.

Hiking wasn’t anywhere on my list of enjoyable activities. My list consisted of playing Barbies, watching Welcome Back, Kotter, trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube, and playing games on my Merlin.

The packing list instructed us to reserve a real backpacking pack—one designed to carry a bedroll and everything we’d need for a week on the trail.

My dad said, “You don’t need to reserve one. I’ll buy you one.” That was his solution for most things. Just buy something. He bought me a basic Jansport school backpack. Can you see where this is going?

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Flex and Clairol Condition were quietly ahead of their time—the precursors to the seventeen-step haircare routines we have today, back when we had no idea that’s where we were headed. And here’s a fun fact for you: Jojoba shot to the forefront of the beauty scene in the 80s when the ban on Sperm Whale products took effect in 1971. It was Jojoba fever. You know you had it.

And Agree. Agree is one of my all time favorites. It made your hair smell SO good. That’s it. That’s the whole review.

Part three of my four-part Oh Nostalgia shampoo series. We’re almost through the whole aisle.

Vote for your favorite in the poll below. 🖤

Part two of my four-part Oh Nostalgia shampoo series. The debate continues.

Vote for your favorite in the poll below. 🖤

This is part one of my four-part Oh Nostalgia tribute to the shampoos that shaped us.

Vote for your favorite in the poll below. This is important research. 🖤

Naturally, she belongs in Disco Cryptids.

Braxie didn’t come all the way from wherever she came from to stand in the shadows. She came to work the room. 🛸🕺🖤

Keep your eyes out for the behind the Story video dropping Monday with considerably more details about this extremely odd experience.

Stay tuned. 🖤

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I picked it up and started to walk away with it.

I thought it was the buzzer to let us know when our food was ready.

It was not the buzzer.

True story. This is why I don’t go places. 🍕🖤

My dad was a lot of things. Boring was not one of them. 🖤

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He would drop his freshly cut toenails into my palm and dissolve into laughter, telling me to go give them to my mom and ask her to make toenail soup.

Sadly, I fell for this more than once.

This is an Appalachianship comic — true stories from my West Virginia childhood. Every word of it. 🖤

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I am currently on endocrine therapy medication as part of my breast cancer treatment. The hot flashes are volcanic.

I contain multitudes. Mostly magma. 🌋🖤

A large part of our relationship is making up funny stuff and trying to one-up each other. By the time we got home, we had Koi George, Kois Don’t Cry, and more.

This is how Corduroy Dreams works. You go for a walk. You come home with a comic. 🐟🎸🖤

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