"She's just a dumb 'ole girl..."

Years ago I worked with a girl at a Texas metro newspaper who was raised in Atlanta. GG was on my advertising sales team of six and was an aggressive salesperson. She had just married a guy from Atlanta, who left his wife for her and it was a bad relationship. She was crazy about him, but he wasn't too crazy about her. He was in finance, but in a sleazy way. On Valentine's Day, she was so excited because he had asked her to a romantic lunch, just the two of them. She dressed up special that day, and I remember thinking that she must have been excited because they hadn't been married that long?

When she got back from lunch she was as white as a ghost and in shock. They had had lunch, and when it was over, he said, "Oh, I moved out this morning and I am leaving you." She got to their home, and he had taken everything, including all of her things too. He left her nothing. They had a joint bank account, and he had taken it all out. And he had forwarded all the mail. This, of course, was illegal, but he was a con man. Her family had made a lot of money, yet were still sort of redneck. PP had marked her as an easy target. Well it took GG many months to recover some of her things, and money, after she had to get her mother to help her hire an attorney.

I remember GG telling me she had two younger brothers that were lazy and fixed cars. And she got braces when I knew her (in her twenties.) She said her father paid for braces for her brothers, but told her she was "just a dumb old girl." And her father paid for college for her brothers, but told her he wouldn't pay for her college because she was "just a dumb old girl." Well about this time our boss was pretty tired of hearing all of her stories. She had given us a big sales incentive for a special section we were selling, and GG was ambitious, so she won. Except my boss refused to pay what she had promised. She then decided to fire GG for getting upset about this. Well, GG hired an attorney, sued the newspaper for both not paying her what they had said (we had it in writing) and for firing her on grounds of being late, when the male coworkers were later than her every day. GG won both lawsuits. And she won enough to put herself through law school, and is a successful attorney in Atlanta.

Guess she's not a "dumb old girl" now....