KALICO: 1 Hypnotized, Naked in Hope Springs, Texas

Amy: Making the Team

Tuesday: My second day as an Apprentice Darling This is beginning to be fun. I was already awake when Mom shook me to say it's time to get up. 

"Hi, Mom. Why did you shake me so gentle this time, when you usually dump me on the floor?" I asked. 

"I've shaken you gently every time, Sweetie. Then I've shaken you harder. I never dump you on the floor until the fourth call," Mom explained. 

Who knew? 

She insisted that we continue our new tradition of breakfast with Perky Me in only pink panties, because we don't want any food spilled on my pretty new uniforms, do we? Besides that, the grandparents love the way my practically-naked self brightens the breakfast table. 

Breakfast was rushed, slightly, because I must be at school by 7 a.m. for volleyball practice. Mom drove me up there because Grandpa wouldn't be going to his office that early. 

I wore my pink exercise shorts with the word "PINK" in blue letters across the seat, and carried my Darlings uniform in a garment travel bag which I stashed in the locker room during practice. 

Three other new players besides myself were trying out for the team this morning. Coach Ainsworth grumbled that we would have all been better off to have showed up two weeks ago when fall varsity practice started, but welcome to the team anyway. 

I thought volleyball was a simple sport, but I quickly discovered there's several ways to do it wrong. 

Coach Ainsworth said "I don't want to yell at you on your first day, Amy, because I know you've never been on a team before, so I'll just say it quietly. You should have spent about five years on a seventh grade beginner team before coming in here. But, not to worry, we're still happy to have you." 

He's willing to accept me the way I am, as long as I'm giving my best effort. He said all that after I had served five balls in a row without once getting one over the net; and he said it again after I learned to get my hands together to make a "forearm bump" only to have the ball bounce off my hands, hit my upper arms and fly up into my nose. 

Well, actually, that three-point bump of the ball into my nose happened four times before someone told me it's a beginner mistake and just hang in there. When I learned how to put enough energy into the serve for the ball to go over the net, I discovered two other things that go wrong for beginners. The ball goes out of bounds or, continues flying right on past the opposite end of the court and hits a wall, and still counts as out of bounds. That opposing court is just as big as the one on our side, you'd think it would be easier to make a ball land in it. 

Coach Ainsworth took me aside and suggested maybe I find some time on our own to practice with some of the other girls. I'll ask one of them when I get the nerve. I hadn't realized how difficult it is to have to depend on friends. I hope Mom doesn't see this journal, but after morning practice, I'm not sure if I have a friend on the team who might work with me. 

Oh, yeah, Coach Ainsworth also told me that from now on I'm to wear the Glory Butt shorts to practice, not the Pink Butt style I wore today. 

After practice I grabbed my garment bag from the locker room and went to a girls restroom inside the main school building to change to my Darling uniform. I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but Coach Ainsworth is a very manly man, and his office is in the locker room. After everything else, I didn't feel up to changing clothes in front of his desk. 

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Almost exactly nothing happened after I signed in for Community Service, except the Thompson Construction Company crew kept working on the patio and the framework for it's glass roof.