When you’re a country girl,
you’re a country girl—
even if you were raised
in the San Gabriel foothill community
of Hastings Ranch.
I grew up barefoot,
or in slippers we called beachwalks.
They were rubber—real rubber—
because we scrubbed them clean
with an old toothbrush.
Mine were white,
and didn’t they shine.
The slippers these days
are made of something else.
They crack. They split.
Not like those forever white ones.
So when, in seventh grade,
we had a dance—my first—
my mother took me to Young Land
in Sierra Madre
for that lime green dress
with the woven bodice like a guitar strap,
and to Harold’s Shoes
for the matching lime flats.
Why flats?
Because we girls were already
three feet taller than the boys,
and heaven forbid we cuddled up
with a partner whose nose
was level with our budding cleavage.
I never had to worry.
As the disco ball spun
rainbow fragments across the gym,
I stood—
back flat against the wall—
hoping nobody would ask me to dance,
hoping somebody would.
It was an early lesson
in how energy works.
So stand there I did.
For how long, I don’t recall.
Perhaps I turned down boys
I thought geeky—
I can’t say for sure.
But from that night forward
I carried a quiet compassion
for the forgotten ones—
the wallflowers,
the awkward adolescents
yearning for life to sweep them up
in their too-tight, pointy shoes.