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We tend to view our own birthdays like we view New Year's Eve: a marking of the passage of time, which can turn into wistfulness about what was accomplished the previous year. Resolutions about the coming year are common on birthdays as well.

Those around the birthday person tend to view the event a bit differently. For some it's a time to poke fun at how old the person is (because, as we know, making fun of a person's inexorable march to death is hilarious) or, more specifically, to poke fun at how much older that person is than than the person doing the poking.

For others, it's a celebration of a year spent with the person. What is life if not a collection of interactions with others? Rather than focusing on the time left, it's a chance to focus on the time already spent.

The most important people in our lives are those that have not only taught us something about ourselves, but have taught us how to better ourselves. While they accept us as we already are, they challenge us to be better than we are, and not usually by direct command. Rather, their presence in our lives is challenge enough.

Author John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902. Sixty years later, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Almost thirty years later, I read my first Steinbeck novel. He'd been dead for 23 years already, but Of Mice and Men instantly became my answer to "What's your favorite novel?" Since then I've read almost every book he's written, and I'm currently reading Journal of a Novel, which is a series of letters he wrote to his friend and editor while he was working on East of Eden.

Like most life-touching things, I'd be hard-pressed to explain what is exactly that I like so much about his writings. His most famous works are set in a time foreign to me - the Great Depression - and are stories of people who work the land, a long way away from my technology-driven life. His characters are flawed and real. The "things don't go like you plan" message in Of Mice and Men must speak to me on levels I don't even realize - in fact, it wasn't until a year or two later that I realized the title was referring to the Robert Burns poem where "the best-laid schemes o' mice and men/gang aft agley." (I know, right? That should have been easily evident.)

So today, 104 years after the fact, I celebrate John Steinbeck's birthday. It's possible (likely, even) that he would have been a difficult person to befriend, but today's a day for appreciating those who have affected our lives and challenged us to be better than we are.

Happy birthday, Mr. Steinbeck. 2 comments

Years: 1982-83
Teacher: Mr. Johnson

I think it was Leo Tolstoy who asked “War! (huh-yeah) What is it good for?”* If Mr. Johnson’s teaching methods are any indication, it’s at least good for instructional films on the topic. My entire fifth grade experience can be nearly summed up with the phrase “war films.”

Mr. Johnson seemed really old to me when I was in fifth grade and even now I don’t really have concept of how old he was. I believe he was a veteran, but I don’t know which war it was. My guess would be the Korean War, as I’m pretty sure he was too young for World War II and a little too old for Vietnam. That’s all speculation, of course. All I know is that we watched film after film of World War II. They were the black and white newsreel type, and when they were done, they always elicited the same response in all of us:

“Backwards! Backwards!”

It's surprising how often he let us do it. I’m not sure what the appeal was, but we always wanted to see the exact same film we just saw, only in reverse with no sound. I’m sure it was funny to see all the soldiers, tanks, and planes going backwards, but I’d bet it was more because that took up more class time. It’s the eternal struggle of students versus teachers: teachers want to teach, students don’t want to learn; teachers want to utilize class time, students want to get the teacher off-topic. In that sense, it’s much like the war films: ground is won, ground is lost, there are casualties, and every so often, somebody brings out the heavy artillery and concessions are made and reparations paid. Getting a diploma is like getting a signed peace treaty – “We will no longer pursue this war. You can no longer badger us and we won’t try to make you learn anything else.”

Mr. Johnson couldn’t see all that well and he was pretty gruff. If you were in the back of the classroom you could goof off fairly safely if you weren’t too overt. Bad kids had to sit in the front row. I remember this because I sat in the front row a lot.

I didn’t always sit in the front row, though. I know for a fact that I sat in the back-right corner of the classroom for a while. I know this because my efforts at class clowning were aided by the wall in that corner. Mr. Johnson would frequently leave the classroom for brief periods of time and we were expected to behave. I, of course, took these opportunities to not behave. For a short time I accomplished this by doing headstands up against the wall very briefly. Unfortunately, one day I wasn’t brief enough and Mr. Johnson saw me when he came back in. A firm believer in “let the punishment fit the crime,” he had me do a headstand in front of the room against the wall for an extended time. I’m not sure how long it was, but it felt like hours. I was told later that my face had been super-red. I’m sure it was dangerous to make a kid stand on his head for a long time, but that’s just how Mr. Johnson rolled. He also didn’t waste time sending kids to the office – if you had earned yourself a spanking, you got it out in the hallway. Anybody that happened to be in the hallway at the time was privy to all of the proceedings. Whether that was meant to be an example or another facet of the punishment, I’ll never know. It served as both.

Fifth grade is the year I start having memories of what the other kids were doing. My previously-mentioned not-friend-yet Josh knocked the clock off the wall above the chalkboard one day, right as Mr. Johnson came back into the room. Josh was pretty tall, and I think he was showing how high he could jump. The look on his face as he caught the clock and looked up to see Mr. Johnson can only be described as “mortified.” I may have secretly delighted in his getting in trouble, I’m not sure. Josh was popular. Really popular. He was smart, athletic, and funny, a sure recipe for success in school. We weren’t friends, on my part probably because I was jealous and on his part probably because he had enough friends already, and, frankly, why bother? Again, this is speculation on my part, and I leave it to Josh to give his side of the story should he ever be inclined.

This was the year Larry K. joined our class and he and I started a destructive friendship. Whether it was shooting the bratty neighbor’s kid in the leg with a BB gun or almost burning down his house by using kerosene in the wood heater, Larry was a never-ending source of danger. Our class took a field trip to his family farm, and I remember he showed me a family of baby raccoons that were hidden away in the barn. I also remember him telling me later that they were no longer alive, and I got the distinct impression he might have had a hand in it. The thing about Larry was that he was given to telling expanded versions of the truth, so it was difficult to distill actualities out of his conversation. At the same time, if the conversation was about destructive behavior, it was easy to believe he was being factual.

We already had one set of non-identical twins (is that “fraternal”? I can never remember) in the class, but this year we got a set of twin sisters who were, by nature of being new, weird. That’s just how it works: new kids are weird kids. I’m sorry. That’s nothing against them, it’s just how the rules work. We didn’t make them, we just followed them. They were identical twins, and, as it happened, they were born on my birthday, making us ersatz triplets. We didn’t really play that angle up until we got to high school, but it was strange to me to share my birthday, and with twins, no less! Because they were new and weird, though, we (the guys) concocted a scenario in which Scot J. was in love with one of the twins (Kerry), mostly to give Scot a hard time for some now-forgotten reason. I hear rumors that Scot’s a millionaire now. Hmm. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, but I can’t decipher it.

Though we got a small morning snack break in fifth grade, we stopped having two recesses. It was Life’s way of teaching us that with age came less fun and it was usually disguised as “more responsibility” or “character.”

Two things I remember being very popular in fifth grade: fruit roll-ups and The A-Team. Fruit roll-ups I got to experience fairly regularly, in all their difficult-to-eatness, The A-Team, not so much. My brother and I weren’t allowed to watch TV aside from occasional parentally-approved things, but The A-Team certainly wasn’t on that list. I caught an episode or two here and there, but most of my appreciation for Mr. T has come after the fact. His in-your-face no-nonsense fool-pitying approach to life should be a lesson to us all, I feel.

Sixth grade meant moving into the “other half” of the building, and into a whole ‘nother phase of life.





*This is a Seinfeld reference, lest you think I am misinformed.

Labels: school memories, Seinfeld

1 comments

Years: 1981-82
Teacher: Miss Linder

Ah, Miss Linder. My first teacher crush. She was pretty, she was nice, and she smiled a lot. Oh, and she wasn’t much taller than us fourth graders. What’s not to like? *sigh*

The great thing about early elementary school years is that part of your day is taken up by teachers reading to you. Every afternoon, right after recess, Miss Linder would read us a chapter from a book. I’m sure it was partly to settle us down and partly to get us interested in books, but it had the extra benefit of eating up school time, so I was all for it. If your teacher had a pleasant voice (and Miss Linder did), well, that was just icing on the cupcake.

A chapter a day means she must have read several books to us throughout the year, but the only one I remember is Where the Red Fern Grows. I don’t necessarily remember the plot, but I remember it’s one of those sad books where everybody’s dog dies for some heroic reason and it’s meant to teach kids about … I’m not sure. Heroism? Pet death? Botany? One of those. I seem to recall we were all pretty bummed about the book at the end.

Somewhere along the way I lost my ability to listen to people read. No matter how hard I try, I can’t grasp what they are saying and my focus wanders. Any time someone says, “Hey, listen to this!” I have to try to explain that it would be better if they just let me read it. It’s caused some hard feelings along the way and I feel bad about that. It’s never been about the person reading, it’s just been that anyone was reading. The written word has more power to me than the spoken word. I think it’s because I can read back over it if I need to figure something out. If I miss something someone said, that’s pretty much too bad. There’ve been movies on DVD that I’ve put the closed captioning on for this exact reason, and it’s also why I’d choose being deaf over being blind - I mean, if I had to choose.

For reasons I can’t fully explain, I look back on fourth grade as the last idyllic time in my life. Whenever I’m asked “What point in your life would you go back to if you could?” I invariably choose this grade. It wasn’t really a transitional year – fifth grade would handle those duties. It was the last year of the lower half of elementary school, so we were on the highest rung of that ladder, and that’s always nice. That whole process of starting over at the bottom at each new stage of life can be daunting: fifth grade, ninth grade, freshman in college, and each new job – trying to learn your place and get acclimated can be too overwhelming. I don’t even like to go into new businesses where I don’t know where to pay for things or how to ask for product. I absolutely hate auctions for that same reason. The unfamiliar is unwelcome in my staked-off little area of the world.

This was the year that Josh W. skipped third grade and joined our class, but I had to be reminded of that fact by him. My memories of him start in fifth grade and we didn’t actually become friends until high school. We’re still friends today, so I feel a little bad about not remembering his first year in my class, but my memories of him from fifth grade aren’t so favorable, so maybe its better to not have memories than to have not-good ones.

These haven’t really been “memories of” so much as they’ve been “musings on” fourth grade, and that’s because I don’t have a lot of specific memories from that year, just general “feely” ones. This was the year I got glasses and also the year I started piano lessons, but those aren’t really “school” memories, so I’m not going to mention them. I’m also not going to mention my sticker collection, especially not the pages full of scratch-and-sniff ones. I will particularly NOT mention that the skunk one was one of my favorites.

I will mention, however, that fourth grade was the year I wrote my first short story. It must have been for a class assignment because I don’t know why else I would have written it. It was a mouse’s point of view of the Nativity scene, and all I remember is that at one point, Joseph lifted the mouse so it could have a better view of the manger. I can’t even imagine writing something like that now – I mean, picking up a mouse and holding it around a newborn baby?!? Germs, man! Think! Apparently, I’ve grown into these phobias.

I think back on fourth grade as being “happy.” It wasn’t that other grades were so unhappy, it’s just that this grade seems, in my memory, happier.

Fifth grade was where the business went down, man.

Labels: school memories

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Years: 1980-1981
Teacher: Mrs. Lingle

In another of those twist-of-fate things that happens in a small town that has a Christian school and a Christian college that are closely tied together, my third grade teacher was the wife of a man who would be my boss in 20+ years. At this time, though, I believe he worked for a scrap metal company – we either took a field trip there or he came into class once, I’m not entirely sure.

Third grade is the earliest memory I have of appalling one of my teachers. Though I tried to make it a regular practice in later years, this first instance was completely by accident. Somewhere along the line, I heard someone use the word “heck,” and it must have been someone I knew and trusted, because I thought it would be a fine word to use. The dictionary says that “heck” is “used as an intensive,” a way to make something be something a little bit more. I understood that meaning from this unremembered person’s use, but I didn’t know that the dictionary also says that “heck” is “used as a mild oath.”

Apparently – and you might sock this information away for future use yourself – Christian school teachers object to their students (especially third grade students) using mild oaths in their classrooms.

We were doing work in class, and anyone with a question was to go to the teacher’s desk and ask for help there. I must have been particularly stumped, because when I approached the desk I said, “I don’t know what the heck this means.” Not only did my teacher’s eyes widen in shock, but the next student in line, Mark B., mirrored her look and expanded on it with a hand to his mouth. It’s another one of those “I’ll never forget it as long as my brain works” things – those looks are permanently branded in my brain. If you’ve ever watched a mystery movie or TV show when the female protagonist realizes that not only is her new boyfriend the killer but he’s right behind her with a knife the size of a Buick, you’ve seen these looks, too. I was quickly disabused of the notion that “heck” was an okay word for me to be using, and life went on. I’m pretty sure Mark B. spread the tale of my being a pottymouth, but what can you do? There was no denying it.

There was a commercial on TV around this time, I think for International House of Pancakes, that had a fellow singing the line, “Another hectic weekday, with deadlines I must meet.” (I think the solution was to go eat pancakes, but I’m not sure.) I didn’t see much TV since, with few exceptions, my brother and I weren’t allowed to watch TV, so I must have seen this commercial while my mom was watching the news or something. I couldn’t believe he was allowed to sing the word “hectic” on TV. I though “heck” and “hectic” were related words, you see. The problem was the tune was catchy and I would sometimes sing it…and then promptly feel bad about singing the word “hectic.”

My hometown church was about 25 miles away from school and it provided a bus to take a whole pile of us to school and back every day. Third grade was the first time I remember snow affecting my school day. One day there came an announcement over the PA that all students riding the bus from Fort Atkinson were to be let out at noon because the snow was getting bad and was only getting worse. I’ll never be a king, but I know what being a king feels like. Every kid in the classroom was immediately jealous and a little bit awestruck. The whisperings and looks were the actions of a subjugated people yearning for the freedom of a half-day of school, and for a brief moment I was able to hold my head high. It didn’t last long, of course. When I returned to school I learned about the concept of “make-up work,” the Iron Mask worn by all pretenders to the throne.

I have a memory that I couldn’t place in a particular year, but judging by the years I was in third grade, it had to have happened then. I was young and naïve and didn’t understand politics. I knew we had a President and I knew there was some sort of contest going on to see who was going to be the next one. Everyone around me was talking about Ronald Reagan and hoping he was going to win. I distinctly remember feeling bad for Jimmy Carter, the current President. My pity was based on the fact that he was already President, so he should stay President. Besides, he liked peanuts and seemed nice enough. I got made fun of a lot when I was a kid – I was a weird kid, so it was mostly deserved – but I really got made fun of for this particular viewpoint. It wasn’t until I was older and more politically savvy that I realized that jelly beans trump peanuts any day of the week and the American people had made a wise choice.

Third Grade was fine, but Fourth Grade was the top of the bottom heap of elementary school, and I couldn’t wait to get there.

Labels: school memories

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We interrupt this series to point you towards my latest review.

Labels: game review

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Years: 1979-1980
Teacher: Mrs. Osborne

My second grade year got off to a bad start. During first grade, I somehow became aware of Mrs. Hershberger, the second grade teacher. She was always really nice and I couldn't wait to have her as a teacher. She would always say "hi" to me in the hallway and I remember saying things to her about being in her class the next year.

Alas, when I showed up for school in second grade, she wasn't there. I'm not sure where she went, but as she is to this day teaching at the college in that town, I'd guess she left to go teach at the college. Regardless, it was a grand disappointment.

I don't remember much about the teacher we did have, other than I don't remember her being very happy. It might just be that time has faded all but the most distinctive memories, but I have this mental image of her sitting at her desk, glaring.

Aside from that, I only have one stand-out memory from second grade, but it's in what I would call the "character-defining" category: I remember having my first sarcastic (or "smart-aleck" if you prefer) thought. It's possible I had some before this time, but this is the earliest one I can recall.

We went on a field trip for the day to a dairy farm. I don't know where you go on field trips in other states, but in Wisconsin, a dairy farm is pretty standard. Now that I think about it, though, it seems odd. It's a pretty fair bet that several kids in our class grew up on dairy farms, so why take them to one on a field trip? Anyway, it was a chance to get out of school, which is what field trips are all about, right?

We'd poked around the farm for the morning, and it was time for lunch. We'd all brought lunches from home, but I'm pretty sure the milk was provided for us -- and I'm also pretty sure it was in cartons, not from the storage tank in the next building over. Before lunch, though, we all had to wash our hands. There was some kind of large sink that allowed several kids at once, so it went fairly quickly.

I distinctly remember the farmer telling all of us, "When you're done washing your hands, wave them up and down to air-dry them. That's the farmer way to dry your hands!"

And I distinctly remember thinking, "Yeah, right. You just don't want us to use up all your paper towels." I didn't say it out loud, as I still had a healthy fear of getting in trouble, but I think that one thought amused me enough to spur other similar thoughts, which eventually started getting said out loud, which eventually got me here: still making remarks that amuse me, and if it gets an audience, so much the better.

That's pretty much all I got for second grade. Third grade was a smidgeon more exciting.

Labels: school memories

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Years: 1978-1979
Teacher: Miss Carpenter

This was the first year of the new school building, so it must have been strange for everyone. Rather than the here-and-there classrooms in the church building, it was an actual school with actual classrooms. Grades 1-8 were all housed in one building. The Main Office was smack in the middle of the building, right where the main entrance was, so there was a kind of natural split. First through Fifth grades were to the left, and Sixth through Eighth and all the “extras” like the library, the art room and the music room were to the right. Kindergarten was still held at the church several miles away, and I’d guess it was partly because Mrs. Reid was accustomed to it, partly because of space, and partly because it seems a natural break. As a First Grader, the other end of the building might as well have been in Kansas. Even our recesses took place in a different area out back, and two natural hierarchies developed: First through Fourth grades and Fifth through Eighth.

Two physical characteristics of my teacher that year stand out in my memory: eyes and fingernails. Miss Carpenter had these seemingly huge eyes that she would roll in your direction in such a way that you knew you were in trouble. In my mind they seem almost caricatures now, but I remember the way she would do it and it did a good job of stopping whatever it was you were doing to have earned it. Also, if you didn’t stop it, you might get the next step: the fingernails. They probably weren’t as long as they felt, but they were strong and they felt pointy, especially in the soft tissues around the bones in your shoulder. She was trained in the ninja arts, I’m sure of it – you wouldn’t be aware of her approach and then BAM. Fingernails.

For a lesson one day, Miss Carpenter brought in Miss Appling, the seventh grade teacher, who was about six feet tall. Jesse R. was the shortest and smallest kid in our class and he was made to stand next to her in front of the class as some sort of example about size. I don’t remember the lesson, but I do remember the way Jesse looked up at her. It was like one of those slow camera pans you see in movies that illustrate just how big the bouncer/robot/Godzilla is. At the end of it, his head was looking almost straight up.

I received my first in-school spanking in First Grade and, oddly enough, I didn’t deserve it. “Suuuuuure you didn’t,” you’re probably saying. As a matter of fact, I didn’t. I’ll go on to say that, over the years, I received plenty that I did deserve, and missed out on several that I should have gotten, but this first one, I didn’t deserve.

We were lining up after gym class, and I was towards the middle of the line. The boy at the back of the line was asked to go hold the doors for us, as was the routine. Knowing he was coming up my side, I stuck my foot out as if I were going to trip him, but giggled and pulled my foot back almost immediately. Unfortunately, David S. was a bigger fooler-arounder than I, so when he got to me, he tripped himself and laid the blame on me. To quote Jasper from The Simpsons, in his role as substitute teacher, “That’s a paddlin’.” Now, I shouldn’t have been fooling around in the first place, I’ll agree, but the spanking was for tripping, and I didn’t deserve it. I think it set me down a path of tomfoolery, as I might have thought, “I’ll get in trouble whether or not I do stuff, so I might as well do stuff.” I don’t know that for sure, but it’s a theory I’ve oft entertained. It should be noted that this was also the day I learned about the "if you get a spanking at school you get one at home" rule.

One of my friends in First Grade was named Birch C. Yep. “Birch.” His family was from Maine, so I assume a love of trees was involved. One day we were lined up at the water fountain after recess and Birch was wearing what people these days call a “trucker hat,” one of those with the plastic snaps in the back for adjusting the size. I thought it might be harmless fun to unsnap the snaps. I thought wrong. In the process of unsnapping them all at once, some of the snaps broke off rather than unsnapping, and his hat was worthless after that. I felt really bad about it, but to this day I think I still owe him five bucks. I saw him a few years ago (like, 12), but I don’t remember if I paid him then or not. Next time I see him, I’ll do it, I swear.

Another lasting memory I have from First Grade is the dreaded penmanship tests. We were full-on into the business of writing letters and I wasn’t very neat about it, apparently. My worst grades were those in penmanship. My parents, as an incentive, told me that if I got an “A” in penmanship, we’d have pizza for dinner. As this was a rare treat back then, I tried my very hardest and managed to pull it off some how. We had the pizza, but the only thing that stuck with me from that experience is my love of pizza, I’m afraid. If this blog were hand-written, none of you would come back. It has been suggested that my signature looks like an EKG reading.

First Grade is also the earliest I can remember meeting Dave O., even though we didn’t become friends until much later. He was in the class ahead of me, so we didn’t mingle much except for at recess. Still, I count him a good friend to this day and we regularly correspond, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Second Grade wasn’t nearly as exciting.

Labels: school memories

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Years: 1977-1978
Teacher: Mrs. Reid

As you might suspect, my memories of Kindergarten are few and far between. Frankly, it might turn out that I don’t have many memories for any of my years of school, but I plead agedness, particularly on this year. After all, it has been almost 29 years since I started Kindergarten, and I have trouble remembering things I did last week.

There are a few things that stand out, though, even after all this time.

First of all, I’ll never forget my Kindergarten teacher as long as my brain works. One doesn’t like to use the word “unique” indiscriminately, but I believe it applies. Before I even got to her class I had heard about her. My brother was two grades ahead of me and he had told me stories about a classmate that had to wear a paper bird’s beak for a day because he made noises and another who had to wear a tail all day for being a tattletale. Other tales of kids being taped to their seats only furthered the trepidation I felt. True to the stories, when she was introducing herself to us, she talked about stringing kids up by their toes and all manner of other tortures. Let me tell you, the fear was struck, hard and fast, in the hearts of every Kindergartener in the room.

Not enough, apparently, as I remember having to sit at the “bad table,” and I remember not being the only person at the table. Of course, “bad” in kindergarten meant “too talkative,” but bad is bad, so there I sat. I also remember spending one lunch period out in the hallway, huddled next to a radiator because I “couldn’t behave in the classroom.”

I don’t remember if I could read before I went to school, so I don’t remember if learning the letters was review for me or new information. I do know that I used to copy my last name off my lunch so I could get it right. Hey, for a kid trying to learn how to spell “cat” and “jump,” a last name of “Zwolanek” can be pretty tricky. I’m not even sure I knew how to pronounce it correctly at this point of my life.

There was a system of gold stars and black blots that kept record of our behavior throughout the year. Gold stars had the extra benefit of earning the recipient a piece of candy. Black blots … well, the only benefit there was shame.

Did everyone have naptime in Kindergarten? What a fantastic idea. It’s terrible that we feel people grow out of naptime, because I often feel like a nap in the middle of the workday would not only help productivity but might also make people friendlier to each other during the other parts of the day - “Bob, I’m not sure what I think of this business plan, but let me nap on it and I’ll get back to you this afternoon.” Our goal during naptime was to be the quietest and lay the most still in an effort to be dubbed “Nap Fairy” and be given the power to wake everyone else up at the end of naptime in the order determined best by the Nap Fairy. Mrs. Reid was still teaching Kindergarten in the same school as of last year and I’m guessing this position still exists, but I’d bet it has a different name now.

The most traumatic memory I have from Kindergarten is from the end-of-the-year party we had at a local park. One of the games we played was that one where you tie a balloon to your ankle and try to protect yours while you’re trying to step on and break everyone else’s. Things were going along swimmingly until such time as Scott I. smacked his head into my mouth while trying to break my balloon. Blood, blood, more blood, and a loose tooth is what I remember. Miss Westphall (a teacher whose name will come up again later but at this time was teaching 4th grade, I think) was the closest teacher with the longest fingernails and she tried pulling the tooth the rest of the way out, but all she pulled out of me were more tears.

The nature of Christian schools, especially ones so near a Christian college, dictates that you’ll have the same core of classmates for most of your years of school. The teachers at the college send their kids through the school and the older students at the college send their kids through for as long as they’re in college. As a result, there were at least five of us that I can remember right off the bat that were classmates all the way from Kindergarten through our Senior year of high school, and even a little into college. Though Scott I. wasn’t one of them and didn’t actually stay with our class past that year, I ran into him years later when he came back for college and confronted him with the years of bitterness I had built up over the incident. I don’t remember the exact sequence of events, but I think I was finally able to get past it.

My Kindergarten year took place in the basement of the church that had started the school. It was to end up being the last year that the whole school was housed there, as they were putting up a new building which would be ready by the time I started first grade.

Labels: school memories

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Okay, it's a new month. No more fooling around. Having "a case of the Januaries" only counts when that month is in session. I'll do my best to soldier on and post, even though I don't have the gumption yet.

So let's do this thing - this thing where I post and you read.

All righty, then. 1 comments