Once upon a time (okay the ‘80s), in a land far away (actually Oklahoma, far at least from me, now, in Houston, Texas), there lived a high school cheerleader named Crystal. Her parents had both been cheerleaders. Her older sister had been a cheerleader. Her older brother would go on to Oklahoma State University and become the school mascot Pistol Pete, a cheerleader of sorts.
Let’s go. Let’s go.
The thing is—Crystal was a quiet girl. She liked reading books. She liked boys too much. And although she liked dancing and gymnastics and performing, she didn’t like yelling, and she lacked an interest in contact sports. But there was a family tradition to uphold, and Crystal tended to be good at things she didn’t like, like math and cheerleading. Crystal also tended to be a people pleaser, and so she was a cheerleader.
More than thirty years later, Crystal’s dad would be cleaning out his own house, the one where she grew up, and getting rid of things he didn’t need and things that didn’t belong to him. He gave Crystal her high school letter jacket, the one that identified her as the cheerleader she never cared to be. The vinyl sleeves had begun to sweat a waxy residue over the years of hanging in a dark closet. The jacket was a hot sticky mess, and besides where does a fifty-year-old woman wear the too-small letter jacket of a high-school girl? And why would anyone need an oozing, never-to-be-worn-again jacket to hang in a closet for thirty more years? The jacket was not worth saving, but it was worth a story. And so Crystal snapped a few photos and wrote one, and she lived happily ever after.
Faith + Gratitude = Peace + Hope 