Just Married

A couple months before my 20th birthday, I went on a Hawaiian vacation and came back married.
See. What had happened was, I was engaged to be married, right?
And then we started talking logistics.
Like, how many people are we gonna invite?
Where do you wanna get married?
(I’ve always wanted an outdoor wedding! And I got one! Waimea Beach Park. 10/10 would recommend)
HOW MUCH IS THIS GONNA COST?

ANYWAYS. Nesto has just gotten back from Korea (I think?) and was finally back in Hawaii.
I had never been to Hawaii and so I decided it would a great idea for me and Adam (age 2) to visit before he moved to another duty station.
And then we decided that since the gang’s all here, Let’s Get Married!
Basically I spent year twenty BBQing at Kailua Beach or at the E-Club with one other Marine Wife and 10 other Marines.
Yeah. Me at age 20 is sorta like me at age 42. Just stateside. And substitute partying at Kailua Beach/E-Club for sleeping on my couch.

Some people, though were out there doin’ shit and making history.

Take Vanessa Williams, for instance.
When SHE was 20, Miss Vanessa Lynn Williams because the First African American crowned Miss America.
Williams’ reign as Miss America was not without its challenges and controversies.
For the first time in pageant history, a reigning Miss America was the target of death threats and hate mail.
I can’t imagine WHY. I mean, she was as qualified as all of the other contestants, right? Hmmm…WHAT WAS DIFFERENT?

Ten months into her reign as Miss America, she received an anonymous phone call stating that nude photos of her taken before her pageant days had surfaced. Williams believed the photographs were private and had been destroyed; she claims she never signed a release permitting the photos to be used. After days of media frenzy and sponsors threatening to pull out of the upcoming 1985 pageant, Williams, feeling pressured by Miss America Pageant officials to resign, did so on July 23, 1984. The title subsequently went to the first runner-up, Suzette Charles, also an African American.
surprise
(There was a back-up black person on deck! I know. I’m so petty. Don’t care!)

Although she resigned from fulfilling the duties of a current Miss America, Williams was allowed to keep the bejeweled crown and scholarship money and is officially recognized by the Miss America Organization as “Miss America 1984”; Charles is recognized as “Miss America 1984-b”

She went on to do SO! MUCH! MORE! with her life. She went on to have a music career, and an acting career on stage and film/TV.
And to think this all maybe never woulda happened if someone hadn’t been trying to ruin her life over a youthful indiscretion.

Spank turns 20 this year! I can’t wait to see what her 20th year is gonna be like. I mean, aside from year 3 at BU (WTF? How is that even possible?!).
I feel like if 18 and 19 are any indication, 20 is gonna be equally memorable. I’m excited! I love watching her live her life! I’m glad I managed to get her this far, and she’s mostly taking it from here. I mean the best we can do is raise them right and not have some trigger happy racist asshole gun them down while they are minding their own business because to THEM you don’t belong and then have to justify even in death why your life matters and you deserved a chance to live it even if you ARE wearing a hoodie* hope that they get a chance to live their lives and make you proud.

*Also in people who WOULD have been 20 years old: Today is birth date of Trayvon Martin. Murdered 21 days after his birthday because post-racial America is not really past race at all.