36 Questions

Goodbye

Granny always said that I was as strange as the cats owned by old women, so therefore I made her a crazy cat lady. I mean, she did technically own me- I was her legal responsibility. And I'll admit, there was a reason behind her claims. When I was about seven, I went missing for an afternoon. Granny was really worried but ended up mad when she realized that I had been in our apartment the entire time, slipping notes under neighbor's doors. When asked about them, I said that they were magic letters, and were going to land Mr. Austin across the hall a hot date: Ms. Marie, who had a crush on him. The letters were supposed to seem like they were from each other, telling one another they wanted to marry them.

Granny was mainly concerned where I learned the phrase "hot date" from.

Ms. Marie and Mr. Austin figured it out pretty quickly, though. Apparently marriage proposals scribbled in crayon aren't something adults do. But I think they dated for like a month after that, so I'm not complaining.

And when I was about eleven, Granny got a call from my teacher who was upset about the fact that I was running a "love booth" during recess. My teacher thought it wasn't right for a kid my age to be so obsessed with love (even though I knew three couples in the grade below). My excuse for Granny had been that love was what had gotten my mommy and daddy together.

So I didn't disagree with Granny claiming that I was a wild child. I was at least a busy one. I sort of kept a lower profile about my obsession when I turned thirteen, however, and was introduced to the wonderful world of lameteenagebloggers.com. It was an interference of fate, or at least I like to think that. I was just researching some dumb thing for a paper and saw an ad on one of the websites. Granny had always told me to avoid those sorts of things, and about half the time I listened. But the other half...well... research was getting boring. The website motto was: Just post your crap, losers. It's cool with us. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

Without telling Granny, I set up an account under the name of Cupid's Lawyer, since obviously it was going to be about love. And it didn't take long for me to come up with and intro:

Posted by @Cupid'sLawyer at lameteenagebloggers.com

Hey guys! It's me, coming at you with a totally lame approach but an important message: love. What is it? What are the symptoms? Do the tricks and things people say about it ring true? I'm not sure, but I'll make it my mission to find out. Read at your own risk, love birds, because I'm Cupid's Lawyer...

How quickly the viewing rates went up was kind of surprising, considering the fact that lameteenagebloggers.com at most had a thousand members, 592 within the first month was a success. I was practically a celebrity on there.

And the readers weren't shy, either. At every post, they would comment with questions about love, and I would answer as best I could.

The thing was, though, it was a little bit more difficult than just a playground fling. I was only thirteen, and hadn't ever had a boyfriend. And I wasn't going to be one of those girls who got one just the sake of fun. I wanted the real deal. I just didn't know what that was, which I explained, but nobody seemed to care. They sensed the same appeal in love that I did.

I was still blogging in the summer that I had everything change for me, the summer that I discovered 36 questions, and a classroom of kids.

The switch was sudden, and completely unexpected, when Granny went in for a rare doctor's appointment. Her leg had a knot, and while she thought that it was just a twisted muscle, she thought it best just to make sure.

Her thoughts were right.

Granny had cancer, and it was bad.

Things happened kind of fast after that. The treatments in our town were pretty much zilch, so the only option was for her to depart to some research facility across the state, leaving me at home. At first she wanted to take me with her, but then re-thought when she realized how much responsibility I would have to take on. I would have to grow up too fast, and for her, that was unforgivable. I would have to spend the summer with her daughter, Christina, who lived in town, but I never actually saw her. I'd honestly forgotten that Granny even had kids aside from my dad.