I miss Gradeschool

What the heck is this thing we call life, anyway? I mean, I'm here at work and I realize that time just shoots on by broken up by the occassional vacation and Stars Games. I miss gradeschool.

Back then, we got time off - and I mean, true time off, like a whole summer, several weeks at Christmas, a spring break, holiday after holiday. But, I think what broke up our lives the most and allows our childhoods, or at least mine, to stick out in our heads is this: change. Every year was different. 6th grade was not 5th grade. 8th grade had new experiences. I can trace back my entire childhood by grade level and remember very specific events that happened:

Kindergarten - broke my little toe. I had a 22 lb weight fall out of a closet (what the heck was a round weight doing being stored in a closet in a house with kids, anyway?) and land *smack* down onto my little toe. That hurt. The doctors taped it up and then I had to wear a wooden "sandel" (open on top) to keep it stable. Wouldn't have been so bad, except our school was doing the Pied Piper and I was one of the kids that followed the magic fluting. Yup, I'm skipping along in my wooden shoe: clack-clack..... clack-clack.... CLACK-CLACK!!!!!! I remember hiding my Yellow Chair, getting covered in ants in a corn-husk pile, and writing my first poem. Oh yeah, and singing that kite song. My first kiss - Patricia Rayburn - we practiced the Colgate commercial. Funny how "firsts" stick out in your head. I don't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but I remember these things...

1st Grade - Mrs. Williams is my teacher - she makes each student feel special by taking them to lunch by themselves there at school - I got McDonald's and we played the connect-the-dots game in homeroom.

2nd Grade - I remember this kid, Marvyn, who was hilarious and didn't care for the rules. We had cups with sticks in them that could be used to buy stuff, but we always had our sticks taken away for misbehaving. Oh yeah, and Kim and Jennifer Keene - the twins. I "went out" with them - bought them plastic rings at Crystal's pizza. LOL.

3rd Grade - I remember my homeroom teacher and where my classroom was. I remember going to the water fountain and seeing a redhead through the door in the 2nd grade classroom. I can't remember much specific to class

4th grade - Mr Bradshaw, who was an amateur pen and ink artist and calligrapher. I remember winning math contests on the blackboards, my GoBots and Transformers. Trinity Christian Academy (TCA), where I went to school through 8th, was doing a Math contest - a math question was posted outside the 5th and 6th grade areas on the wall. The question was open to anyone from K-6th. I solved it - I remember during announcements, my name being called and I went down to the principals office and received a trophy. I won the next one as well.

5th grade - I was selected to represent our school's 5th grade entry into the ASCI (Christian schools) math competition. I placed first. I remember Mrs Franzmeier taking an interest in my future and working with me on my stamp collection. Actually, now that I think about it, I actually had a tendancy to have these types of friendships with adults and my teachers until adolescence...

6th grade - Square dance. Sky Ranch. Got selected as one of 3 students to go with Mrs Miner's husband to the American Airlines training facility and fly a DC9 flight simulator. That was cool. My first cat, Oreo, died of Feline Leukimia (sp?).

Now, I also have a lot of random memories from my childhood that I can't quite place with a particular schoolyear - well, I probably could if I spent enough time connecting the dots, but I figure at this point of my life, anything I really want to remember, I remember.