My Extraordinary Ordinary Life by Sissy Spacek, Maryanne Vollers

he knew I was all right, didn’t come down to the accident. He was so put out with me, he sent my mother. When the police officer turned on the ignition, the radio came on, blaring pop music loud enough to be heard in the next county. Funny thing, I don’t remember being punished for the accident, but I certainly didn’t drive for a long time after that.
    What I remember most vividly after all these years is that the woman I hit got the traffic ticket, not me. It may have been because my parents worked in the courthouse, who knows? But it was so wrong and unfair that it’s bothered me all these years. If you’re reading this book right now and you were driving the car I hit from behind at Goode and College Street (now known as Sissy Spacek Drive!) in the early 1960s, I am so sorry. I should have gotten the ticket and paid for the damage to your car.
    In junior high I was a cheerleader, and as a freshman in high school, I marched with the band as a drummer. But I developed a nasty staph infection on my knee from wearing a brace for the snare drum and decided to rethink my choice: The next year, I was a twirler with the marching band.
    Becoming a cheerleader or a majorette was the ultimate social achievement for a high school girl in Texas. Majorettes wore short shorts and boots with jingle taps, and worked up fabulous routines, marching while twirling a baton in each hand, much like the Coquettes. We marched with the school band in all the parades, but our biggest performances were, of course, halftime shows at the football games. High school football comes right after Jesus and family in Texas, as anyone who has ever seen Friday Night Lights can tell you. So the pressure was on for the band and the majorettes. The biggest game of the year was homecoming, when the Quitman Bulldogs played our arch-rivals, the Mineola Yellowjackets.
    One homecoming, we prepared a spectacular routine for the end of the halftime show: We had made special batons with asbestos-wrapped tips soaked in kerosene. At the designated moment, each of us twirlers lit the batons and gave the signal for all the stadium lights to be shut off. The band played a drumroll as we marched into the dark center-field, twirling and throwing our double-fire batons high up into the air. The crowd oohed and ahhed as the flames cut figure eights and spun in the black night. We were giddy; it was a triumph. Meanwhile, back in the locker room, our coach was revving up the team with an inspirational speech and a lot of shouting and chest-thumping. The plan was for the Bulldogs to run out on the field, all pumped and ready to play the second half, as soon as our finale was over and the lights snapped back on.
    It all went perfectly as we tossed our fire batons in the air for the last time and gave the signal to flip the switch. The revved-up team burst out of the locker room, into the darkness … and straight into a chain-link fence. Nobody had realized how long it takes for halogen lights to fire up again. And so for the next ten to fifteen minutes, our previously pumped-up team milled around aimlessly in the sputtering half-light, while the coach chewed out our band director in no uncertain terms. I can’t remember whether the team won or lost that night, but we didn’t get to walk the boys off the field. And I don’t think we got to march or play the next few games. We were in the doghouse for a long, long, time.

     
    When I was a teenager, my life revolved around school, music, horses, and boys. I had a lot of boyfriends when I was in grade school, but Clifford Zack Cain was the first one to break my heart. Cliff’s mother, Imogene, who raised chinchillas behind the tourist court, was one of my mother’s close friends, so he and I had known each other since before we could walk. By the time we were in fourth grade, Cliff had been my boyfriend on and off for years. (I thought it was funny that I had one friend named Hill and another named Cliff.) One day Imogene