“There’s not much to tell.” She continued to eat, then shook her head with a sigh. “That’s not correct. I’m an unusual person. I’m smart, and my parents knew it, however, they refused to allow me to skip any grades and start college before I graduated from high school.”
“Didn’t that stall your education?”
“No, actually, I worded that wrong.” She sighed as she pushed her clean plate aside. “My parents were older than most in the cul-de-sac I grew up in. It was a great neighborhood, don’t get me wrong, and there was nothing wrong with my home life, or where I lived.”
“Okay, so what happened?” He took their plates and went to the sink, and she joined him, but she pushed him aside saying she’d clean up the mess if he would divide the left-over food for them both. As they worked, she talked.
“As I said, my parents were a little bit older than the others in our neighborhood. They didn’t have me until they were thirty-five, while the other mothers were in their early to mid-twenties. Anyway, by the time I was seven, I was already reading at a much higher level than everyone in my class. One weekend, I was bored, so I read the entire workbook and did all the problems in it. That was for math class. It took a lot of convincing the school to get me tested, and I tested high on my IQ. Like genius level. My parents didn’t want to ship me off to college at the age of eight or nine, because that’s how old I was when they finally finished the testing. We came to an agreement.”
“Which was?” Tony asked after she was silent for several moments.
“Oh, sorry. They told me I could take college classes on-line, but I had to go to school like a normal kid and try not to be bored. It was hard, like extremely hard, but then Johnny moved in down the street.”
“Who was Johnny?” He tried not to sound jealous in his quick demand for answers.
“Before I get to him, let me tell you what I did in my spare time.” She turned to him with a grin, and he sucked in his breath at her beauty. He could look at her all day.
“What did you do?”
“I tinkered.”
“Excuse me?”
“One day, Mom mentioned that the toaster was on the fritz, and when she had time, she would stop at the store on her way home and get a new one. When I got home from school, I tore it all apart, cleaned it, and put it back together.” Her grin was endearing to him. “Without any left-over parts.” That statement caused Tony to laugh, and they settled back at the table.
“What happened next?”
“I told Mom at dinner that night that I fixed it, and she didn’t have to buy a new one. I don’t think they believed me until the next morning and it worked better than when it was brand new. That toaster still sat on the counter when I left for college at the age of eighteen. Anyway, after the toaster, I started to tinker, or fix, whatever small appliance was on the fritz. Word got out, and the neighbors started bringing their things to me to fix.” She looked off to the side with a frown, then nodded. “Between you and me, I think they did it to appease me, you know, throw me a bone. But when they got their stuff back and it worked better than fresh out of the box, they started paying me.”
“It was for my eleventh birthday that the entire neighborhood pitched in. My Christmas gift that year was a shed.” She laughed as she remembered. “It wasn’t assembled. That’s when I got to know Johnny better. He helped me put it together, then dad hiredsomeone to make sure I did it correctly, and he, Dad put his foot down about having me wire it. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the wires were in, so were the outlets, but before they turned on the power, he wanted a professional to inspect it.”
“Did you do anything wrong?”
“Nope, it just gave Dad some peace of mind that I do it right. Anyway, Johnny was a special person.”
“How?” Tony didn’t realize he was actually jealous of this boy.
“He wore a prosthetic leg, the result of him being hit by a drunk driver when he was younger. It took months to find the driver, then they had his trial. From what I overheard and was told, it was a mess.” She shook her head sadly, then looked at Tony. “Johnny was the fifth person he mowed down and his sixth DWI. Because of whom Johnny’s parents were, the book was thrown at the driver and he was sentenced to a long time in prison. No one would tell me the exact sentence, just that he went away for a long time. Anyway, once Johnny was released from the hospital, it took several months before he was fitted with a new prosthetic.” She shook her head as she remembered.
“What?”
“One thing the doctors and parents didn’t take into consideration as they gave him the fake leg, was his growth. As he grew he started to develop a limp, because they didn’t replace the prosthetic.”
“Damn, what did you do?”
“Johhny’s sister and cousin were older than him, by about six or seven years, respectively. They stayed at Johnny’s house because the college they wanted to go to was only fifteen minutes down the road. As long as they helped out around the house, they could live there. I got to know them quite well. During the time Johnny helped me build my shed, those two girls would help also. It was Johnny’s sister, Paula, that was complaining about how Johnny would limp and then his hip would become sore, and the stump would rub raw.
“One day I asked Johnny if I could see his fake leg, and stump. He was embarrassed at first, but Paula convinced him to let me. Johnny was fifteen by then, I was only eleven.”
“Oh, wow.” When he learned of the age differences, he wasn’t as jealous as he was before when she talked about him. It was something he would have to look into once she went home for the night. He had never felt this way about a woman before.
“Yeah, well, I took pictures, made notes, and started ordering supplies on line. Because I wasn’t eighteen, Paula set up an account for me to order what I wanted. It took a year, but I made a prosthetic for Johhny. When he put it on and walked around, I thought I had overstepped, or did something wrong, because after only walking about thirty steps, he sat down and burst into tears.”
“Oh my God, what happened?”
“It took about fifteen minutes to get Paula there, because I was freaking out, and by the time she got him calmed down and learned why he was crying, she looked at me and grinned.”
“Why?”
