They laughed when the truck driver grabbed the microphone—until one skinny boy stood up shaking and called her the bravest parent in the room.
“Ma’am, the guest speakers are supposed to wait by the curtain.”
The volunteer smiled when she said it, but her eyes had already gone to my boots.
Mud on the soles.
Reflective jacket over a plain black shirt.
Hair tied back with a red gas-station scrunchie.
Around me stood people who looked like they belonged in brochures.
A dentist with perfect teeth.
A financial advisor with shiny cuff links.
A woman from a private clinic carrying a slideshow about “future success.”
And then there was me.
My name is Linda Brooks.
I’m forty-six, I drive an eighteen-wheeler, and I’ve raised two kids mostly through voicemail, highway coffee, and the promise that I would always come back.
My daughter, Emma, begged me to do this.
“Please, Mom,” she said the night before. “They need to hear from somebody real.”
I almost told her no.
Not because I was scared of talking.
Because I was scared of being looked at the way people look at folks like me when they think we don’t notice.
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