Water lily reflection, Skylands Botanical Garden last week: visit 2.

Maybe this name will ring a bell with my sister. I don’t know if she will remember her or not. (Sis, do you remember??)

The mind is a strange thing. At least mine is. I was sitting here this afternoon reading a book, The Age of Miracles, a dystopian novel about how the earth slowly stops spinning. The girl in the book is twelve and it’s her voice that tells the story. I read the sentence where she looks down in disgust at her never-ever-been-shaved legs and Debbie Ginder pops into my brain. POW! There she is. Now where did that come from I have to wonder? I have not thought about her since the 60’s. It was so weird that I had to write it down immediately.

I know exactly where it came from but how my brain made that leap is amazing to me. It’s because Debbie Ginder was responsible for me shaving my legs and under my arms for the first time, and right around that same age as the girl in the book.

She lived in our subdivision around the lake from us (we were living in Florida at the time) and if Snookie on Jersey Shore would stage any competition with hair, it would have been with Debbie. She had a bouffant hairdo with side burns and wore tons of eye makeup. I think her hair was reddish. Hey, it was 1968!

She was older than I was and very worldly in my eyes. Hey, she had breasts; I did not. (Well, maybe I had bumps at that point and a “training bra,” which leads me to the question as to why breasts had to be “trained?”) She went out with boys; I did not. I’m not quite sure why my parents let me hang out with her.

Anyway, one day when my prepubescent self was over at her house she looked at my legs and underarms and casually said “Why don’t you ask your mom to let you shave?”

DUH. It had not occurred to me before then. I went home and asked my mom and she agreed it was probably time.

Thank you, Debbie Ginder wherever you are in the world today.

Now I ask you, doesn’t the mind work in mysterious ways?