Chapter I – How I Met Anthony’s Father

I met Tommy, Anthony’s biological father, when I was fifteen years old. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Tommy because that same night, I came to the conclusion I never wanted to lay eyes on him again!!!!!

The night I met Tommy, I was supposed to be meeting my boyfriend, Ken at the movies.   When I arrived at the theater, this guy walked up to me and said, “Are you Lori?” I said, “Yes”.  He said, “Hi, my name is Tommy and I am here because Ken couldn’t make it.  He asked me if I would take his place because he didn’t want to stand you up.”  I thought this was rather strange because I had no idea who this guys was.  However, it was very considerate of Ken to make sure I wasn’t alone. Since Ken knew this guy I assumed it would be okay to see the movie with him, boy was I wrong!!!!

We waited in line, got our tickets, went inside the theatre and sat down.  Once the movie started we both decided we didn’t like the movie so Tommy asked me if I’d like to walk with him to the bookstore.  The bookstore was located in the mall which was connected to the movie theatre.  I wasn’t allowed to leave the movies but since the mall was connected to the theatre I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble so off we went. 

Once we arrived at the bookstore, Tommy immediately walked to the comic section which was located in the back of the store. He turned around towards me and started fondling me everywhere. He was all hands!!!  I pushed his hands away from me and told him to quit.  He said, “No one can see us because we are in the back of the store.”  I explained to him there were mirrors above us and everyone in the store could see us. After several times of pushing his hands away, Tommy finally realized he wasn’t going to win the fight and decided to leave the bookstore. I have never been so embarrassed in my life. 

Once we left the bookstore we had nowhere to go because we weren’t allowed back in the movie theatre.  After standing around for a couple of minutes, Tommy asked me if I would like to walk with him to his cousin’s house.  Not knowing how far it was, I agreed to go.  His cousin’s house was a pretty good distance from the movie theater.  Put it this way, I lived a good distance from the theatre and we could’ve walked to my house from his cousin’s house. 

We stayed there until the movie was almost over then we walked back to the theatre where my father picked me up.  I know I could’ve walked home from where we were but if my parents would’ve found out I wasn’t at the movies I would’ve been in trouble and I didn’t want that.

I’ve never been so glad to get home from a date in my life.  That guy was a jerk and I let Ken know exactly what I thought about Tommy.  Ken was very apologetic and promised me it would never happen again.

Little did I know but that wouldn’t be the last time I would see Tommy. When I was eighteen years old, Tommy and I were both hired to open the Family Dollar Store in Newport, AR. The manger assigned us to work together stocking shelves, I wasn’t happy at all with this decision.  I thought to myself, “Well at least here we will be with a lot of people so he won’t be able to try anything.”  Because we spent a lot of time together we got to know one another better.  He even apologized to me for acting the way he did on our first date.

The more time we spent together the more we started flirting with one another.  Before I knew it, we actually started liking one another other but we never saw each other outside of work which was a good thing.

Family Dollar ended up hiring me permanently and they let Tommy go. Not long after that my family and I moved from Newport, AR to Jackson, MS so we were no longer in the same town. Our moving was a good thing because I really didn’t need to get involved with this guy anyway.

You aren’t going to believe this but when I was twenty years old and living in Jackson, I saw Tommy again. It truly is a small world.  Who’d a thought I would see Tommy in Jackson, MS of all places. 

One day my father and I were sitting at home and it was getting close to supper time so Dad told me to call Mother at work to see what she would like for supper.  When I tried to call her I discovered our phones weren’t working. Since none of our neighbors were home I had to drive about five miles up the street to the nearest convenience store to use a pay phone (keep in mind this was before cell phones). 

I called our phone company to see what had happened to our phones and they told me there was a construction company in the area that cut our phone lines while digging. I thanked them and as I was hanging up the phone I turned around just in time to see this truck drive past me. In the window of the truck was this guy pointing at me.  I recognized the guy in the truck as Tommy and I thought to myself, “Oh my God, surely not!!! Please God please don’t let that be Tommy!!!!!” He got out of the truck, walked over to me, hugged my neck, and introduced me to the guy driving the truck, his boss.  He told me he told his boss he knew me and his boss told him there was no way he knew me because I was out of his league.  Sure enough he knew me, lucky me.  Guess what?  Tommy was with the construction company that cut our phone lines.  Not only that but he was the person that actually cut them.

Not long afterwards we started dating.  As our relationship progressed we got more serious about things and became sexually involved.  For those of you that believe you can’t get pregnant from having sex only one time well…….we had sex one time and it was in July of 1986. In August of 1986 I found out I was pregnant.