Day Twenty-six - Maybe seven - Back to San Francisco Reunion

Alright, so I'm tired and don't edit very well. When I use "their" instead of "there" please swap words for me. Back home from ANOTHER football game. Fortunately, my sixteen year old son did get to play tonight. Yea, Go Bears!! Football is not a pretty game anyway you slice it. For those of you following my youngest (fourteen) son's injury last night - when we spent 5 hours in the emergency room - he is doing well. Probably will be back playing next week. Yikes.

I hope you enjoyed memories of the shrine story that I posted this morning. Or was it last night? I can't remember. That was fun. Listening to Mr. J tell the shrine story and challenging us to walk to the shrine, alone. I didn't make it the first time, or the second. It took me several times before I got up the nerve to go.

I remember when my oldest son, now 27, was a cub-scout and I was the "Cub master" I revised the shrine story and told it to a group of scouts one night at a camporee. They believed me and I had parents the next day telling me that their boys didn't sleep the entire night. It was great!!

I hope you enjoyed that memory. Isn't it interesting that amidst the abuse there are good memories? I guess that is what makes it so difficult to disseminate.

Okay, back to the reunion in San Francisco. My brother-in-law was engaged in the picture taking of each of the classes. When the class of 1973 or 1974 came into the room he evidently ran across this woman who was asking some questions about the past. I don't know exactly what she was asking, but what ever it was prompted my brother-in-law to come find me. When he came and got me and said, "Come, there is someone I think you need to meet.", I went. When he put this woman together with me I instantly recognized her. It was Michele Conner. The then girl who helped me and let me put my futon next to hers. That was when the abuse stopped.

Michele and I began talking and I reminded her that I had approached her during the reunion in Long Beach in 1990 and she admitted that she didn't remember that I had talked to her. That night, Michele and I began a long journey together.

The rest of the reunion was smothered in memories of Mr. J and the abuse he imposed upon, not only me but others. Up to this point I had no knowledge that anybody else had been molested. I only knew that I had been. I heard rumors that there were others but I didn't pursue it. Michele's memories only helped to solidify At this point, she was on a mission. And by association, I was on one with her.