Oh wow, this was good. Your writing is always brilliant but these pieces about your childhood always blow me away.
This:

Such positive associations compared to being drilled on health, the backs of our naked knees, always in dresses, pinching as we shifted on metal foldable chairs circled in painted white cinderblock rooms with rust-colored carpet. A three-hour forced sit with no downhill-run to make up for it.

Fabulous.

You should write a thriller based in your "weird little town". It makes me think of "To Kill a Mockingbird" (or have you read "The Bottoms" by Joe R Lansdale? I love the way he writes) Something where the town and the "normal" lives of folk are as much a character as the people