Trailer Trash Redux

I wasn't going to submit this but then my comment was deleted. That pissed me off- especially when I was trying to be reconciliatory about the term trailer trash.
I really was trying to shut up. Still. My whole life. Even as a child when I was quiet and and not moving, trying to be invisible so I could escape the lash, the slap, the punch- there must have been something in my eyes, in my upright soldier's daughter posture. Something about me that was too loud. Even now on paper. I was trained to be silent. What is the first rule my father would ask- shut the f**k up was the answer. Silence. If you cry I'll give you something to cry about. If you make a sound you'll be sorry. My menacing brothers -- If you tell on me I will kill you. I promise not to tell. I promise not to tell. I was a mouse with pissed off eyes and a bad attitude in a family full of alpha males. I left town with a backpack full of books, 3 pair of panties, 3 tees and a hope for a better day. I left with a good ole boy who had beautiful long red hair, perfect white teeth and an inability to commit to any kind of relationship. I should have known it wouldn't work out, he never read books but God, was he pretty and he knew his way around the VW Bug that was my ticket out of town. For this part of the story imagine the Aretha Franklin version of Chain of Fools playing as the soundtrack. Now, even if I look back, I will never go back.
I know it was the trailer trash remark that got to me. I've been called that. I never know when it's going to take me off guard. Catch me with my pants down, unprepared to take the punch. I was always too angry about that expression. Trailer trash was used a weapon to put me in my place. There is something about me not ever knowing my place: the only girl, the baby girl, the brainy girl the one with older bad brothers who had bad reputations. I will not be shamed by where I'm from. Some of my family still lives in Tennessee on those long, dusty roads. No street lights. Still swimming in the creek, fishing, catching crawdads. Still in each other's business. Still in the trailers. They seem happy.
You don't know if there is a woman or a girl child reading those comments. Some girl, a child like me, reading herself all the way through small town public libraries and bookmobiles. Or some woman stuck, trying to read her way out of those narrow-minded small towns. I can see myself now, in some of those small towns that I lived in, asking for a Lora Leigh or a Joey Hill in one of those libraries and imagining the whole town knowing what I'm reading. They seemed to know everything else about me. Yes, I AM too opinionated. Too smart for your own good they said. How else could I have read my way/made it out of those too dead, too hot summer small towns? Those towns where they judge you for being the trailer trash that they call you. Those towns where the librarian sends you to the children's section and tells you that you can't read books from the adult section because you're too young. I stopped reading children's books by the time I was 8 or 9. If the town had a library it was my place. My second home. I was always safe at home base. This is for the women and children still in the trailers- don't flinch when they call you trash. Remember, it's not living in the trailer or being poor that makes you trash. You should see the snobby, six figure income trash living in my town.