What Was I thinking? Such a simple question. But with such a complicated answer. We were two teenagers playing at being grown up. Sure we had unprotected sex. Not that we couldn't afford a condom. We just believed it couldn't happen to us, not the first time anyway. We got away with it the first time, or so we thought, so we kept on stretching our luck until it snapped back at us. We convinced our parents to let us get married. How, I'm not sure. Neither of us worked or even wanted to work. We were teenagers and teenagers are supposed to have fun, right? We lived in five different places and were on our sixth when the baby was born. I was ten weeks pregnant when we got married. It wasn't the failure to pay rent that got us thrown out each time. It was the noise. We argued from the time we got up until we went to bed at night. We believed in and practiced the old wives' tale of don't go to bed angry. At one place we lived, the police spent more time at our house than at their assigned precinct. We finally got our act together and settled into family life. But we were entitled to have some fun. After all, the year was 1970.
Jo M. Russell is a 60-year-old mother of five and grandmother of six, living in Clarksville, Tennessee, with her cat. This is her ninth book.
