Seventeen years old........in 1976 when I was 17 I was more like today`s 14 year old. I was not a social butterfly in high school, I was not at all the important parties on the weekend, I never came to school on Monday with a low cut shirt and a neckful of hickies to show everyone - my big claim to fame was that I frequented the indoor smoking area - wow! I babysat for most of the local RCMP families, I taught piano and theory lessons during the week and practiced my own piano studies for my exams, I worked weekends at a local drugstore. In hindsight - my mom had it pretty easy with me! When I graduated from high school I knew 1 thing - I was going to the University of Sask. enrolled in the College of Education. Not because I had always dreamed of being a teacher and going away to school......because my dad said I was going to university and there would be no discussion. Why the College of Education - because I had no idea what choices I might have had, my Grandmother had taught school forever ( even in the little one room school house) and because somehow I won the local Teacher`s Scholarship for a first year Education student. My life was planned out except for one thing.........I didn`t plan it. I was homesick, I didn`t want to be there, I was so socially and emotionally delayed - I was the proverbial fish out of water.
Needless to say I was one happy person to board a plane out of Saskatoon in December of 1976 to go to Coquitlam and be with my family for a month. I had rec`d letters from my mom every week sharing with me her plan to buy a store in Princeton - a gift and grocery store - the big city of Coquitlam was not for her and my uncle, being a real estate agent, had found the perfect place for her in Princeton. We made a trip up there during my stay that Christmas and oddly enough the one very vivid memory of that trip that I have - my uncle got into the back seat and specifically asked me to sit beside him. Weird but very complimentary in a back handed way. We all had Christmas dinner together and as a family spent more time together thru out that month. After I flew back to Saskatoon and settled in for the second half of my first year a strange letter came in the mail one day. My uncle wrote to me that he was envious of all of the boys at University who would be the ones to sit beside me during the long cold winter evenings and go on horse drawn sleigh rides with me. Hello, I was in Saskatoon going to school - not filming an episode of Little House on the Prairie. And....how weird is it that your uncle is envious of boys being around his niece.........at the time I had no clue just how weird this was........I was being groomed and I had this person who was only 12 years older than me writing to me at university. Oh God how I wish I could turn the clock back 35 years.
Stalking his prey, tiptoeing around in the forest, carefully covering his tracks and camoflauging his true existance, tossing out bits of tempting treats to lure his prey out into the open and away from the safety of the herd.....always adjusting his view in the sights of his rifle....the hunter waits patiently in silence for that one perfect shot..............
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