Girl, You're Just 17!

Welcome to Take One of April’s Secret Subject Swaps. This week, 12 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts. 

Here are links to all the sites now featuring Secret Subject Swap posts.  Sit back, grab a cup, and check them all out. See you there:

http://www.BakingInATornado.com                       

 http://chewylicious.wordpress.com/                   

http://smn0409.blogspot.com/                

http://dinoheromommy.com/                   

http://www.justalittlenutty.com/                    

http://followmehome.shellybean.com             

http://stacysewsandschools.wordpress.com/     

www.amotherlife.com                                      

confessionsofafailingdomesticgoddess.blogspot.com

 http://hypnoticbard.blogspot.com/                                   

http://suburbiainterrupted.com/

http://mooreorganizedmayhem.blogspot.com/

My subject came from Confessions of a Failing Domestic Goddess and it is "Let's go back in time. You're 17 years old. Tell me what your life is like."

Oh, 17 years old. That was a few years ago, so my memory may not be that great, but I'll try to be as detail oriented as possible, as this will be an amazing story, about the discovering of womanhood and overcoming poverty.

Wait...I actually remember it very well, now that I look back. What I'm going to tell you about is actually the summer I turned 18, because it was a very defining time for me. We lived in a run down, one room shack like house somewhere outside of New Orleans. We were very hard pressed, barely making rent and being able to afford food. But then the most amazing thing happened....

My mother somehow came up with the money to buy me a dress that was mostly used for dancing.

We washed, brushed, and curled my hair, put some make up on me and then I stepped into that dress. It was a satin dress with a split in the side up to my hip. It was red, made of velvet and it fit me like a GLOVE. When I looked in the mirror, I was floored, because where a half grown kid had stood before, now...there was a woman.

Mama, love her heart, dabbed the little bit of perfume she had on my neck and then gave me a kiss on the cheek. She started to tear up as she looked around at our pitiful house, then looked at me with troubled eyes and told me that my dad had run off, she was really sick and my poor baby sibling was going to starve to death. 

It was then that she put a locket around my neck. It was shaped like a heart and had "To Thine Own Self Be True" engraved on it. I found myself shivering, I'm not sure if it was due to the chills I had or the roach that had just crawled across the toe of my high heeled shoe. In a voice that didn't sound like my own I asked her, "Mama? What do I do?" She said to me that if I was nice to the gentlemen, they'd be nice to me.

When I left our rundown shack that night, I didn't look back. Mama died, child protective services came and took the baby. Fate was starting to deal me a different hand, but I felt stuck. It took very little time for me to realize what my mama was talking about. While not proud of my actions, I did what I had to, all the while promising myself that I would become a lady. I didn't know when and I didn't know how, but it was going to happen.

It wasn't very long after that a man of money took me in. About a week after that I was pouring his tea in his massive suite. I met and charmed many men. A congressman, a king, and occasionally an aristocrat. After such experiences, I was able to afford a Georgia mansion and a really elegant New York townhouse flat. I have to say, I haven't done bad.

People like to talk about about my mother for turning me out at the tender age of 17.  This world is full of self righteous hypocrites, let me tell you. And while I haven't had to worry about nothing for about 15 years, sometimes, I can still hear my mama's desperate voice ringing in my ears.

She said to me "Here's your one chance, Fancy! Don't let me down!" And I don't think I did. Because, while I might have been born just plain white trash.....by god, FANCY WAS MY NAME!

So that's my story of when I was 17.......

Now why not go see what the other's have for ya!