Joan Ayala:  

It's a funny thing, trying to look back on those days. My sisters and I lived in a kind of strange home with very odd rules and regulations. We had fun, were well known as the Ridout girls and we took advantage of that to get in the front of the line at Baxters and the like, but I remember being very lonely. I hated the home I came from even though I loved my sisters very much. My mom was not the best role model, but she taught us sponteneity, love of music, flexibility and how to enjoy life by having a very strange sense of humor. At 28 I went to college at Warner Pacific and receive a degree in Psychology and a minor in Biology. A year after graduation I decided to go into teaching. I decided on special ed and taught 6,7, 8the grade in one classroom, with students ranging in ability from pre-primier to talented and gifted. They were emotionally disturbed, oppositional defiant and conduct disordered and I loved them. They were the most unique and interesting groups of kids I think I could ever meet. Over time I met and married, then divorced and again over time met and married again. Even though that marriage, too, ended in divorce, I consider myself lucky to have been married to two wonderful men who taught me a lot. I concentrated on my kids and on my job and just...Expand for more