You Cannot Mess This Up

A True Story That Never Happened

Amy Weinland Daughters

• Publisher: She Writes Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN:
  9781631525841
• Subtopic: Science Fiction

It's 2014 and Amy Daughters is a forty-six-year old stay-at-home mom living in Dayton, Ohio. She returns to her hometown of Houston over the Thanksgiving holiday to discuss her parents’ estate—and finds herself hurled back in time. Suddenly, it’s 1978, and she is forced to spend thirty-six hours in her childhood home with her nuclear family, including her ten-year old self. Over the next day and a half she reconsiders every feeling she’s ever had, discusses current events with dead people, gets overserved at a party with her parents’ friends, and is treated to lunch at the Bonanza Sirloin Pit. Besides noticing that everyone is smoking cigarettes, she’s still jealous of her sister, and there is a serious lack of tampons in the house, Amy also begins to appreciate that memories are malleable, wholly dependent on who is doing the remembering. In viewing her parents as peers and her siblings as detached children, she redefines her difficult relationships with her family members and, ultimately, realizes that her life story matters and is profoundly significant—not so much to everyone else, perhaps, but certainly to her. Amy’s guide said her trip back in time wouldn’t change anything in the future, but by the time her thirty-six hours are up, she’s convinced that she’ll never be the same again.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Chapter One: Piper Comanche 400
• Chapter Two: Coordinates
• Chapter Three: The Freaking People
• Chapter Four: Hello from the Other Side
• Chapter Five: Are you There, God? It’s me Margaret
• Chapter Six: Sergeant Snips
• Chapter Seven: The Walking Dead
• Chapter Eight: Bitches, Ballers, and Olive Branches
• Chapter Nine: Funk & Wagnall’s
• Chapter Ten: Trailer Trash
• Chapter Eleven: Feel the Burn
• Chapter Twelve: The Streaker
• Chapter Thirteen: Zip up your Bibles!
• Chapter Fourteen: The Happiest Bitch in Here
• Chapter Fifteen: It Happened in the Conservatory …
• Chapter Sixteen: Emotional Diarrhea
• Chapter Seventeen: Smoked Ankles
• Chapter Eighteen: Mr. and Mrs. Coffee
• Chapter Nineteen: First Blood
• Chapter Twenty: U Totem
• Chapter Twenty-One: Don’t Light a Match
• Chapter Twenty-Two: The Best Nine Bucks I Ever Spent
• Chapter Twenty-Three: Fiscal Package
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Dial 411 for Information
• Chapter Twenty-Five: The Good Stuff
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Menstruation Without Representation
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: Wide Open Spaces
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: Tomato Catsup
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: I’ve Got a Golden Ticket
• Chapter Thirty: The Fittest Red Bird Ever
• Chapter Thirty-One: Re Vera Factum EST ITA
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author