Mindy Reed
Bio
Mindy is an, editor, narrator, writer, librarian, and educator. The founder of The Authors Assistant published Women of a Certain Age: Stories of the Twentieth Century in 2018 and This is the Dawning: a Woodstock Love Story in June 2019.
Stories (43/0)
Thoroughly Modern Me:
I was in my bedroom, rummaging through my closet for an outfit to wear to our cast party. I had already pulled on my shiny black “shapewear.” I knew from experience that you cannot put these on like a normal piece of clothing. I had pulled mine out of the freezer, and flopped on my back like turtle that had been turned on its back. Then I wriggled and rolled and flopped around as I pulled what they called a girdle in my mother’s day over my defiant hips. With a final snap over my stomach, I pushed my elbows into the mattress, rocked back and forth, and hoisted myself up.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Viva
White Knuckle Driver
I was on the phone with my latest best friend Etta. She had recently asked me to take her to the airport. As well as my aversion to driving, I hated disappointing people and found it difficult to say no, especially when I thought someone needed me and had taken the opportunity to befriend me. Others who understand friendships much better than I do know there are two favors that will test any friendship, helping a friend move and taking a friend to the airport.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Horror
The Catman of Austin:
My husband, Ronald, an army brat, never had a pet. But in 1984, I convinced him to let me adopt a stray kitten. He agreed, under one condition: he got to name her. For the next ten plus years, the cats we adopted were named after his former girlfriends. That first kitten, Tomeka, crawled up on his pillow that first night with us and peed on his head. Don't ask. Tomeka was allowed to have a companion. Denise, and so the naming went until that Christmas Eve’s eve in 1996 when I rescued a sickly orange kitten, the last in the box of Free Kittens. My husband's initial reaction was, "No." Still, I took the little guy to our vet.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Petlife
Before He Was Jimi
The public image of Jimi Hendrix is often of the musician standing on the stage the Monday morning of Woodstock, playing the National Anthem to a crowd the one-tenth the size of weekend audience. But before he was known as the greatest guitarist of all time, he was James Hendrix, Butch to his friends. He didn’t even start playing electric guitar until he was fifteen years old. His first gig was in the fall of 1959 in, of all places, Temple De Hirsh Sinai in Seattle, Washington. By all accounts, the shy sixteen-year-old wasn’t that accomplished. Of course that sentiment could be because at the dawn of the rock and roll era, garage bands were expected to cover the popular songs of the day, and not show self-expression. The result was that Hendrix was fired after the first set because the teens at the party could not dance to his erratic playing.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Humans
Inverted Jenny
Jennifer Miles accepted a plea bargain of assault and battery rather than attempted murder. The incident wasn’t premeditated so the district attorney agreed the fourteen-year-old could serve her sentence as a juvenile. After four years, she was released to a halfway house. No one was there to greet her—not even her mother. Normally shy, the girl had gone into a rage when her mother’s latest boyfriend was beating her. She grabbed a skillet and hit the brute in the back of the head. If the pan had been cast iron instead of aluminum, it probably would have killed him. Still, she had hit him with enough force to knock him out long enough for her and her mother to get out. Her mother, more worried about her boyfriend than her daughter, called 911. Jennifer was still sitting on the front step when the cops arrived.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Viva
Farm to Table or
Lucille looked down at the cast iron skillet on top of her range. “Sunnyside up,” she whispered. That is what her grandmother used to call fried eggs. She held the brown shelled egg in the palm of her right hand and thought, I’ve never tasted a fried egg as good as my grandmother made. She sighed. “And I’ve never been able to duplicate her technique,” she muttered.
By Mindy Reed3 years ago in Families