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Excerpt from, "How To Ruin a Pearl"--- a Novel


    In the late summer of 1971 I was about to enter fourth grade.  I was eight years old that day.  The sky was a clear blue, the summer air was calm, we were in a high, with a slight breeze that blew west to east. 
        My mother stood before me and held in her hand, a book.  Mom stood 5’5” or so, hips, and shoulders with curves that killed.  Back then she had recognized something about me that I was uncertain of.  She held out a book, it was five inches in height by seven inches in width approximately.  The book was pink with gold lettering in script, written on an angle.  The word said, Autographs .
   
    As she handed me the pink, hard, yet cushioned covered book to me; a second later she asked, “May I have it back?”
   
     I wondered why, yet I slowly handed it back to her. After she received the book back from me, she then looked me in the eye and asked, “Is it okay that I write something in it for you?”
  
    I responded, “Yes Mom.”


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