Outside Reading #3

In my book, "Petal Pusher", Laurie Lindeen finally was fed up with Martha's Vineyard, the boring jobs it presented, the oppressive hot summer, and unsuitable living conditions in her life, and so were the other band members. Lindeen explains, "'Hey, it's Phyll.' She sounded all business, she must be working. 'I've had it. Let's move to Minnie.'" (12) And that was all it took for Lindeen to move into a one-bedroom on Hennepin Avenue in Uptown. She took a Greyhound bus to Minneapolis on August 1, 1985 along with some "poor working class" people aspiring to a new start also. On the bus, Laurie recounted some of her childhood and high school experiences. "My family in 1979 consisted of two parents apporaching forty: an adorable eight-year-old boy, my youngest sibling and only brother, Chris; a perfect-in-every-way ten-year-old, my sister Hillary; and an exceedingly kind and likeable fourteen-year-old, my sister Megan. Being neither adorable, nor perfect, nor exeedingly kind, I was the aloof oldest girl who couldn't wait to shake my dorky family and get out into the world" (Lindeen 15). Due to her perfect family and the pressure that was expected upon her, Laurie fell from a high school overachiever to a girl who "...got so crazily puke-and-pass-out drunk at my first homecoming that the principal had to carry me out..." (18). After attending the University of Wisconsin and dropping out after a few years, the only thing Lindeen had to turn to was music. Lindeen's writing style is portrayed in a laid back personal form, but I enjoy it because it is simple and to the point as she describes how she copes with all of her issues. The chapter ends with the female rocker arriving in Minneapolis with only her guitar and a few bags.