It’s fall here, and I find I have reason to consider junior high dances. It is a rather macabre evaluation, akin to discovering a long dark hair under the cheese on your purchased pizza slice when you’re already half finished. You feel sick because the damage has been done but there’s no going back.

My own experience was similar to many, I suspect. Another wallflower growing along the cracks, shielded from the sun of popularity by thick glasses, formidable test scores and unfashionable clothes. Even now, Can’t Fight This Feelin’ will send me running for the door while everyone else pairs up for the slow dance.

With each story, chapter and blog post I find I am again back in junior high. Will they like it? Does this make sense only to me? I’m a little unpublished wallflower, haunting blogs to find out what the cool (published) kids are doing, working on her moves in the critique groups, and hoping that one day someone special will ask me to dance.