Chapter 4

Nuisance

I was six years old the first time I flew on an airplane by myself.

It was the summer between first and second grade, and I was going to Minnesota.

It was also the first airplane flight I remember.

I was scared.

I was six.

I was on an airplane without Mom or Dad, going somewhere by myself for the first time.

The stewardesses were wonderful.

They were kind to me.

They helped calm me down and made the flight a little less scary.

And eventually, I made it to Minnesota.

I would spend about a month there with my grandparents.

It was the first of several summers I would spend in Minnesota.

I remember being thankful to be on solid ground again.

Then I saw Grandma waiting for me at the gate.

I pretty much ran to her.

I was happy to see her. She was my favorite grandma on Dad’s side.

We hugged quickly and went to get my luggage.

I remember watching the luggage going around on the conveyor belt and thinking how

much fun it would be to ride on that thing.

Apparently, surviving my first airplane flight wasn’t enough. I was already looking for

another questionable form of transportation.

We got my luggage and headed for Grandma’s Thunderbird.

Grandma loved her Thunderbird.

That love of Thunderbirds would eventually carry on to my Aunt Tania when she started

buying cars of her own.

I remember riding with the window open.

I was taking in the fresh air and all the nature around me. The trees. The forest.

And then something hit the back of my throat.

I started gagging.

Choking.

Grandma laughed.

She told me it was a deer fly.

A deer fly had flown straight into my mouth.

Deer flies and I have been enemies ever since.

The drive gave me my first look at Mille Lacs Lake.

It was huge.

To six-year-old me, it looked less like a lake and more like an ocean stretching as far as I

could see.

I remember staring at all that water and trying to take it in.

I remember seeing Grandpa when we got there.

“Well, here’s Nuisance.”

I think Aunt Lori laughed.

And that was it.

I had a new name.

Nuisance.

It wasn’t just something Grandpa called me that day.

Nuisance was what Grandpa called me for most of my childhood.

He didn’t really talk to me much.

By the time I was an adult, he stopped calling me that.

I was hustled off to my room to unpack.

It wasn’t really my room.

It was Aunt Lori’s.

There were two twin beds with royal blue covers, a dresser, a closet and a window.

I dropped my luggage off, but before I even unpacked, Grandma showed me a cupboard in

the living room.

She opened it.

It was full of comic books.

Archie. Richie Rich. Casper. All kinds of comics to choose from.

I went nuts.

I’d already become an avid reader during first grade. At the beginning of the school year,

I’d gotten in trouble for not participating in the book-reading contest all the students were

supposed to do.

Apparently, I took that personally.

By the end of first grade, I was reading everything I could get my hands on.

And now Grandma had just shown me an entire cupboard full of comic books.

I read those things like crazy.

Later, I would bother my youngest second cousin to let me read all of his because his were

more current.

For the next few years, I pretty much won every book-reading contest they threw at me.

I remember going out on the boat.

Aunt Lori went water-skiing, and I watched from the boat.

I think she had some friends staying with her that summer, too.

I wanted to be like Aunt Lori.

Mom thought Lori was awesome.

And Mom made it pretty clear that I needed to be like her.

Or better than her.

She was my measuring stick.

The problem was, Lori didn’t even like me.

I didn’t understand why then.

I still don’t.

That rental house eventually became Lori’s family home. She’s lived there for more than

forty years now. They’ve added onto it and renovated it over the years. I’ve been told it’s

beautiful.

I wouldn’t know.

I’ve never been invited inside.

I also ate some of Grandpa’s fish for the first time.

Somehow, they had the Colonel’s recipe for the breading.

They used it on the Northerns Grandpa caught, and they tasted so good.

At some point after I arrived, there were two more trips to the airport to pick up my

cousins, Mark and Chad.

They weren’t brothers. They were cousins, like me, and both were boys close to my age,

although a little older.

The three of us spent part of our summers there together.

Looking back, I think that was the arrangement. We were all there at the same time so my

grandparents could have the rest of their summers free.

At six, of course, I didn’t think about any of that.

I just knew Mark and Chad were there.

And I was the only girl.

I don’t remember where everybody slept.

I remember what we did.

We swam.

We played around the docks.

There was a little tiny cove by my grandparents’ dock where we could take the canoe out.

We fished off the dock, catching sunfish and bluegills.

Most of them were too small to be worth much.

But some of them were Judy-sized.

My first fish was a sunfish.

I caught it myself, and Grandpa prepared it for me to eat, just like he did with Chad and

Mark.

It wasn’t a very big fish.

But neither was I.

Something else happened that summer.

Mark molested me.

I didn’t know that’s what it was then.

I didn’t even know it was wrong.

I was already used to being touched in ways a child shouldn’t be touched.

To me, it was something family did.

And more than anything, I wanted people to like me.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on what happened with Mark.

It happened.

And unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the last time.

Mark and Chad could water-ski.

I couldn’t.

Lori tried to teach me, but I could never get up on the skis.

I never did learn to water-ski.

But I could tube like anything.

Grandpa would pull me behind the boat and purposely try to knock me off.

He’d whip that tube around, trying to dump me into the lake.

He rarely succeeded.

I could hang on.