Volunteer Explorer

My first real crush was my second-grade teacher, Miss Tate. She had frosted and feathered Farrah Faucet hair, and she wore bell-bottoms and metallic blue eye shadow. A little later in fourth grade, I fell for my best friend, Kelly Randolph. She was tall and had long brown hair and porcelain skin. For Halloween that year, I dressed as Tom Sawyer and she as Becky Thatcher. We got to hold hands as we walked around the school in the costume parade. It was probably also in fourth grade that a substitute teacher mistook me for a boy. I was a tomboy, always wearing the hand-me-down t-shirts and jeans from my three older brothers. In this 9- and 10-year-old period, I also sported a gender-bending bowl-cut my mom gave me in our basement. When we lined up in the classroom to go to the restroom, the sub took my arm, pulled me from the girls’ line, and put me in the boys’ line. It took the protests of all my classmates to convince her that I was, in fact, a girl. Flash forward to midd...

“I’m going to step outside for a cigarette before it gets crazy,” Stacy said as she put her coat on. “Okay,” I said, leaning on the counter of the concession stand. “Enjoy your cancer!” Only after I said it did I realize how that might sound to someone I had met less than an hour earlier. Stacy and I were the volunteers for Saturday’s show, tasked with selling drinks and snacks during the intermission of the night’s show, “Christmas in Akron.” Stacy’s response to my glib comment surprised me. “I do have cancer,” she said without changing her expression. “But I have brain cancer, not lung cancer, so it’s okay.” My stomach dropped a little at the thought of having offended her. Then she chuckled. “I’m so sorry,” I said. Then I put my hand to the corner of my mouth as if sharing a big secret. “You should be smoking something else, then.” Her eyes seemed to take me in anew. “Oh, I do that, too.” She didn’t seem in much of a hurry to get outside for her cigaret...