I was a math whiz in high school.  Mrs. Beaumont was our high school math teacher and she is my inspiration.  I can still see her nicotine stained fingers busily writing algebraic equations across the blackboard, chalk in hand.  I wasn’t paying all that much attention to the formulas.  I have the Sloas math gene.  The solutions and the logic were as clear to me as a  hidden picture in a Highlights magazine.  It was almost like cheating.  But I was mesmerized.  Those arms. Those wobbly, saggy, undulating arms.  I can still see them.

We were active kids from the get go. We would go outside to play after breakfast, stop for lunch at whose ever house we happened to be near and come home at the sound of the dinner bell.  Pearline would ring this big ole cow bell and shout “Shahhhh  nahhhhh, Mahhh leeeee ahhhhh” (thats how she said Melisse). We climbed trees, made forts, played tag, jumped rope, rode bikes.  Then we started swimming on a competitive team and we did that five or six times a week.  I wasn’t all that good, but I was right there in the thick of it.

Me at Swim Meet