A high school marching band version of Patty Schemel.
This story appears in VICE magazine and Noisey's 2017 Music Issue. Click HERE to subscribe to VICE magazine.It was the summer before sixth grade when Dad moved out. It was a surprise to no one that my sister, Susan, would go with him—she was a real teenager now—and Larry and I would stay home with Mom. The two of them would move to Seattle and get an apartment, and we would visit with him on weekends. That was the idea anyway. The primary upside to my parents' divorce was that Susan would be out of my hair, and I'd get the bedroom and its dresser drawers all to myself. With her gone, I was the oldest in the house—that included my mother, who was as absent from our lives as Dad and Susan.For the first time in her life, our mother was free to experience her revolution from within. Even though she had to work, it was obvious that she enjoyed it much more than she'd enjoyed staying home with us and playing the role of housewife. Now she was free to reinvent herself once more. She promptly got a job at the General Phone Company (chief rival of Dad's employer, Pacific Bell) and got really politically active in AA. In short order, she'd become the delegate for the entire state of Washington. This meant she had to speak at many conferences, and she left my brother and me alone during long weekends, to our great pleasure.Continue reading on Noisey.