appear weak when you are strong
and strong when you are weak.
-- the art of war
Shea Elizabeth Saunders
She can't really remember when she was five, she gets told lots of stories, however, the whole family has something to say about the time she ripped her pink Sunday School dress while climbing the trees to get at the neighbor's cat that summer when everything was too hot and the water barely ran anywhere. Shea's family was very Southern, and in that, they always tended to embellish and throw color where they can. The family is kind of large, rather expansive, stretching from off the center of Georgia over making a kind of circle up until you get to Minnesota. Her mother, Charlotte Lynn Saunders (nee Darsey), died not so long before the story about the pink dress and the tree. That wasn't to say that she didn't have a really lovely childhood, she did. Plenty of love, lots of attention, she was her father's whole world, wrapped up in going fishing on Saturday mornings and cello recitals the week after next. Didn't have her first boyfriend until her last year of high school, where she was voted homecoming queen to boot - this being snubbed in favor of heading out to see Manhole open for Fear Factory..
After High school was a particularly tense time in the house, her father (Beauregard, 'Bunny to his friends') getting older and more annoyed than anything that she didn't have a steady boyfriend and couldn't decide between two or three schools the summer prior (finally settling on the University of Georgia), he sort of edged her on into what he'd hoped would have been. There were failed attempts at police training, Muay Thai training that she'd kept up with the whole time, self defense courses that were both learned and taught after a time, a flirtation with being a court reporter and working in the library back home for a good, long while (she liked that part, mostly history). Somewhere in there, after her father speaking to various friends, he'd secured her a spot at the Albany Museum of Art where she helped with the tours and where she helped arrange the loaned exhibitions in and out of state while she worked on her degrees in history and literature.
There was, of course, some guy. But there is always some guy in every story. He was head strong and he was intelligent and he argued with her, all the time. It took her a time to figure out that's why she kept entertaining long nights and longer conversations with him - and they carried on that way for four years, a very nearly almost, which is what she calls it if it's ever come into question. But toward the end it felt like they'd both gotten so comfortable with each other there wasn't room for change, and that was no way to live. A very nearly almost was good, but it felt like they'd both died - no one wants that kind of thing on their conscious.
It was at that time that Shea decided that it was finally time to leave - and she'd been thinking about it for time time, she'd been there nearly the whole of her life, and while Georgia wasn't so bad, depending on the parts you frequented or found yourself, didn't mean it was a stay there for always kind of thing. At first it was little things, just wanting to leave, get out - she went beyond state lines (this wasn't anything amazing for someone who'd just turned 28, but being a Daddy's girl and something of an at least state-shut in, Shea thought it was quite adventurous.) She found herself holed up in Tennessee in a little bar uptown - where she wound up taking part time after learning the ins and outs of mixing part time after she got back from the Edmondson Pike Library -- eventually, part time became full time, became subbing in for the guys who were late for work on crowded nights and helping stop more than a few fist fights.
Eventually, there was a band that was doing a mini tour of the east coast that had one or two homedates at the bar Shea was working at and, as she was friends with one of the merch people, she wound up following them around for a few months. She roadied, sold merch, she haggled with bookers and so forth - deciding, about a year ago, that it was time to stop. Winding up in Massachusetts, she did what she'd always done - despite her father not thinking she was always the best at it, she was resourceful. Finding an apartment never took all that long, especially if she knew which names to drop and which to omit - Shea found herself working two jobs, because there was, of course, too many hours in a day, never really enjoying time to let herself sit and wonder off in thought. With luck she managed to land a job working the door and the bigger crowds at the House of Blues in Harvard Square.
After High school was a particularly tense time in the house, her father (Beauregard, 'Bunny to his friends') getting older and more annoyed than anything that she didn't have a steady boyfriend and couldn't decide between two or three schools the summer prior (finally settling on the University of Georgia), he sort of edged her on into what he'd hoped would have been. There were failed attempts at police training, Muay Thai training that she'd kept up with the whole time, self defense courses that were both learned and taught after a time, a flirtation with being a court reporter and working in the library back home for a good, long while (she liked that part, mostly history). Somewhere in there, after her father speaking to various friends, he'd secured her a spot at the Albany Museum of Art where she helped with the tours and where she helped arrange the loaned exhibitions in and out of state while she worked on her degrees in history and literature.
There was, of course, some guy. But there is always some guy in every story. He was head strong and he was intelligent and he argued with her, all the time. It took her a time to figure out that's why she kept entertaining long nights and longer conversations with him - and they carried on that way for four years, a very nearly almost, which is what she calls it if it's ever come into question. But toward the end it felt like they'd both gotten so comfortable with each other there wasn't room for change, and that was no way to live. A very nearly almost was good, but it felt like they'd both died - no one wants that kind of thing on their conscious.
It was at that time that Shea decided that it was finally time to leave - and she'd been thinking about it for time time, she'd been there nearly the whole of her life, and while Georgia wasn't so bad, depending on the parts you frequented or found yourself, didn't mean it was a stay there for always kind of thing. At first it was little things, just wanting to leave, get out - she went beyond state lines (this wasn't anything amazing for someone who'd just turned 28, but being a Daddy's girl and something of an at least state-shut in, Shea thought it was quite adventurous.) She found herself holed up in Tennessee in a little bar uptown - where she wound up taking part time after learning the ins and outs of mixing part time after she got back from the Edmondson Pike Library -- eventually, part time became full time, became subbing in for the guys who were late for work on crowded nights and helping stop more than a few fist fights.
Eventually, there was a band that was doing a mini tour of the east coast that had one or two homedates at the bar Shea was working at and, as she was friends with one of the merch people, she wound up following them around for a few months. She roadied, sold merch, she haggled with bookers and so forth - deciding, about a year ago, that it was time to stop. Winding up in Massachusetts, she did what she'd always done - despite her father not thinking she was always the best at it, she was resourceful. Finding an apartment never took all that long, especially if she knew which names to drop and which to omit - Shea found herself working two jobs, because there was, of course, too many hours in a day, never really enjoying time to let herself sit and wonder off in thought. With luck she managed to land a job working the door and the bigger crowds at the House of Blues in Harvard Square.