Thirty things about grade school

 

1. Dick and Jane illustrations were intriguing. They live in a different yet similar world, slightly boring but also...what might happen next?  Illustrations are a deep love. Sitting on the floor at school waiting for my turn to read.

2. Interpreting the personalities of numbers from their shapes. Watch out for 7 and 9. But you can always count on 4 and 6.  5 is a wild card but usually fun... Sucking at math, subtraction is mean.

3. Plagiarizing Doctor Suess for god's sake...

4. Read alouds. In heaven with Charlotte's Web.

5. Climbing trees at recess. Against the rules...

6. Grandfather dropping me off on a rainy day during a paper drive. All that wet paper and ink merging with the smells of a delightful gray day. Windshield wipers slap slap slap.

7. Jealousy of the new girl who could play violin (and she did, for our class in her first few days at school) and had captured the attentions of the boy I liked, Glen. My first listmaking episode...What IS it about this girl?? Dumb brown hair, doesn't talk, ugly shoes, ...

8. Making Valentine boxes. The store-bought cards were so cute and creative back then. Noticing who gave you what and who didn't...developing a SPINE!

9. Loving the little decorations the teacher would change up for the seasons and holidays. I wanted a house full of tissue paper leaves.

10. Hating to leave Ms. Poor who truly loved me.

11. Old lady Ramseur was so mean.

12. The unfairness of being accused of something I didn't do, when I was actually trying to help. More spine, baby. Discovering I know when grown-ups have a real problem, and how to avoid them.

13. Looking at a classroom full of fellow third graders and finding three that look promising as friends. But that takes time...

14. Assigned to the lowest reading group because, I suspect, I have a southern accent.

15. The most strictly run classroom I could never have imagined because I had not yet read Dickens...

16. Mean teacher actually scooped me up and carried me from the room when I got ill at school, and placed me at the door of the girls' room.

17. St. Louis smells like sycamore trees. (I figure that out later, but noticed it then.)

18. Why did I even buy those little milks that were never cold enough and made me gag?

19. Having no idea what I was doing and ascribing alphabetic elements into math problems arriving at nonsense....but better look busy. Later algebra would be shocking indeed.

20. Oh my god there is something called Gooeybutter cake. But mom only buys them once in a blue moon. I'd get out of bed for Gooeybutter cake...

21. Someone tells John E I like him and he tells me he knows I like him. I immediately stop liking him...

22. Never can get back in Ms Golschman's good graces after I correct her pronunciation of Mozambique. I know because I am enthralled by Angelique from Dark Shadows. I'm not a bossy genius, Ms. G.

23. Lots of time in the hallway now. So boring. No book to read. Spine growing.

24. Ms. G's coffee and cigarette breath blowing hard in my face. Imagining I'm one of Hogan's heroes...

25. The student teacher from Canada who wears white clogs (LOVE them!) and doesn't shave her legs...interesting.

26. Test scores show Not so Dumb as I Look...but suspect everyone else's were better than mine.

27. Ms. Kratke has a book on communism in her classroom library. I find it interesting and decide I need a uniform. Closest I can get is Catholic school placement, but the fam won't go for it...

28. The little lambs in the backyards of my diverse neighborhood. Wondering why they're only there a few weeks, then gone? Didn't ask George K I suppose...

29. Knee socks and skirts. Mom really needs to up her game on coordinating knee sock colors with these skirts! Ugh, white doesn't go with everything.

30. Ms R wears many ruffled neck blouses that make her head look like an unlikely flower.