Coming Down the Home Stretch

After trying on and off for several years to get his Bachelors Degree, Seth is finally going to graduate this week. He's been working so hard and studying a lot during this last year. I can't believe how well he's done. This week he's got a couple tests and a very large paper due so he'll be busy up until the very last day of the semester. I just wanted to let him know how proud I am of him. I know he's going to finish strong and come this time next week, he'll finally have that piece of paper in his hand. Job well done, sweetie! I knew you could do it!

7th Grade (aka Hell)

I was scared to death of going to middle school. Everything seemed so big... the kids, the building, my schedule. My locker was a huge phobia. All those teen movies show the nerdy kids getting shoved into them. I was sure that was going to happen to me. I was afraid somebody would grease my locker and I wouldn't be able to open it. I was afraid I'd forget my combination or keep going past the number I needed and be standing there in the hallway for hours trying to open it... in fact I had actual recurring nightmares for years about that one.

My middle school was so crowded that I could barely move going down the halls. I wasn't very tall at the time and had trouble seeing where I was going, let alone the room numbers, with all the throngs of students that surrounded me.

The first day of school I was nervous, REALLY nervous- the kind of nervous where you can't eat anything because you're sure you'll puke if you do. Corinne was in 9th grade and luckily she was nice enough to find someone to show me where homeroom was the first day. She had no idea how grateful I was. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly as I recall. I was happy to find that our lockers were only about three feet high, making it impossible for me to be shoved into one. I also had a different kind of latch on mine that made it ungreasable. I still had the lingering fear of forgetting my combination, but that never actually happened.

The second day of school didn't go so well. Even though the first day had gone OK, I was still extremely nervous. I had almost made it to my homeroom that morning when they called my name over the intercom to come to the front office. When I finally got there after fighting my way through the crowds, the office lady handed me a finished homework assignment that I had apparently dropped in the hall somewhere. Shortly after leaving the office the tardy bell rang... and the panic set in. I pulled out my map of the school and tried to find my way to homeroom again. I got to the spot where the room was supposed to be according to the map but to my horror, it wasn't there. I began pacing up and down the hall, sweat beading on my forehead, stomach turning. Where was it?! It had to be there somewhere! Finally I got up my nerve and asked a couple girls who were still out in the hall (probably some hooligans who were sure to beat me up) if they knew where the room was. Luckily they took pity on me and didn't point me in the wrong direction. The classroom was right where it was supposed to be, but the door was in the other hallway around the corner. I felt like an idiot. I hurried into class and sat there the entire time dreading the next bell. As the minutes ticked by I felt sicker and sicker. When the bell finally rang I just couldn't take it anymore and went to the office. I told them I didn't feel good and called my mom to come get me.

For the next two days I stayed home sick. I was terrified. I spent two days working myself up even more, sure that terrible things would happen to me if I went to school. I don't know exactly what I was afraid of. I was always the good kid and didn't want to let on that I was anything less than perfect I guess. I was scared of being tardy, I was scared of getting in trouble, I was scared I wouldn't fit in, I was scared of change.

On the third day my mom finally forced me to go back to school. Everything went fine from that day on and I was just the typical nerdy 7th grader. There was something good that came from all that drama. I have never since been nervous or scared about starting a new school or a new job. I know that my worst fears are never rational depictions of what will actually happen. I realized I'm a smart, capable person and that I can do anything just as good or better than the next guy. Worrying about things doesn't help at all and most of the time it is destructive. I can roll with the punches and take things as they come. Change is exciting and I love the mystery it brings.

Elementary School

Elementary school was pretty easy for me. I think that's why it was my favorite part of my school career. I was the smart kid, I was on top. Once I got to middle school I was just another kid.

My first grade teacher was Mrs. Webb. She had short red hair and was really nice. She let us choose names for our table groups depending on the holiday. Somehow she always remembered the different names, even though they changed quite often. A few years after I was out of Mrs. Webb's class, my mom was watching the news and heard that her husband had been killed in a plane crash. It was pretty sad, she was fairly young.

Like I said in my earlier post, Mrs. Slaughter was my second grade teacher, but I don't remember anything else about that year. In third grade I had Mr. Galloway. He was an older man who always wore slacks and a button up shirt. He would use his knuckle to point to a word or whatever else he needed to draw our attention to on the chalkboard. He also had a comb-over that always flew straight up in the air whenever the wind blew. We tried to keep from laughing as we stood in line outside to come in for recess. I saw him years later with a toupee. I don't know what was funnier.

Mr. Galloway is the only elementary school teacher that ever publicly scolded me. A boy had been teasing me one day and I kicked him in the shin. Immediately Mr. Galloway bellowed, "Karen, I can't believe you'd do such a thing! I'd expect that kind of behavior from others but not from you!" The class went dead silent and I could feel my face turn red from embarrassment. I had to try really hard to keep my eyes from watering. I never understood how some kids could get yelled at all the time for bad behavior and it didn't phase them. I took it very personally and hated to ever disappoint any of my teachers. I was a bit of a teacher's pet... always wanting to help out, always one of the first to raise my hand. I loved parent-teacher conference because my parents always came home with comments about how smart and well-behaved I was. I was "a teacher's dream."

I did get a stern talking to from Mrs. Beutler, my fourth grade teacher. My friends and I would pinch each others butts because we thought it was funny. We were too young to realize that was the stuff of sexual harassment. Mrs. Beutler pulled me aside one day and told me it was inappropriate and that if anybody did it again I should tell them to stop it in a very forceful tone. I was very embarrassed that time as well, but at least she had the tact to censure me in private. I probably would have melted and died had anyone else heard that conversation. On a different note, I believe that was the same year my "boyfriend," Jeremiah, and I broke up over Nintendo.

Mrs. Cazier was my fifth grade teacher. She told us that we could remember how to say her name by saying, "Cuz air is good for ya!" She was my favorite teacher in elementary school. She read books aloud to the class on a regular basis and those books became some of my all time favorites... "Matilda," "Hatchet," and "The Witches" just to name a few. Mrs. Cazier was a skinny, brunette woman who was naturally pretty. Some boys in my class once asked her how much she weighed and she said 115 pounds. They were all amazed. She would randomly draw a student's name from a jar once a week and whoever she picked would get to choose a prize from a pencil box full of surprises. I won all the time; it was great.

For some reason I can't remember my sixth grade teacher's name. It might have been Ms. Beck, but I'm not sure... I think it started with a "B" though. She was nice enough on a one-on-one basis but tended to get a little crabby with the class as a whole. I saw her at the mall one time coming out of a lingerie store. She was probably embarrassed but I didn't think anything of it. I was just excited because I'd seen my teacher.

The only other memory I have of sixth grade is not a pleasant one. I was a bit of a late bloomer and all the other girls were wearing their training bras by that time. I had been too timid to ask my mom if I could get one too (not that I needed it). My class was walking down the hall one day and a couple of the popular boys were messing around and snapping all the girls bras. A boy named Jason came up and tried to do it to me and when he couldn't he said, "She doesn't have one!" and they all started snickering. It was pretty humiliating. I was very self-conscious about that anyway and that little incident definitely didn't help. It's kind of sad in a way to look back at all the time I wasted worrying about what I looked like. I see my old school pictures and think I looked pretty dorky, but then, all the other kids did too. You don't see the big picture when you're a kid.

Preschool

My family has lived in the same house since the time I was four, so I never had to go through the experience of being the new kid in school. I'm not sure if it was the proximity to my mom's work building or if it was the only good one around, but I went to a Challenger preschool on the east side of town. It was probably a good fifteen to twenty minutes away from the house.

I had two teachers in preschool, Ms. Kay and Ms. Kathy. I can remember both their names easily, but somehow cannot remember the name of my sixth grade teacher. Anyway, Ms. Kay was a pretty lady with typical 80's permed hair. I'm sure it was hot at the time. Ms. Kathy had short red hair and was a little more plain. I don't remember anything at all about them except that they were good singers and I liked them. We used to sing a lot in preschool. We would sit on the carpet and sing such classics as "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" and "This Land is Your Land." I still think of preschool when I hear those songs.

The Challenger school had a killer playground. It seemed huge to me at the time. I'd like to go back and check it out again just to see if it really is as big as it is in my memory. There was a paved track that went all around the playground equipment that you could ride Big Wheels on. There were only two or three Big Wheels and usually only one of them had a good front tire. Anybody who had ever had a Big Wheel knows that the front tire inevitably splits down the middle. Although it's still possible to ride the damaged bikes, it's not an enjoyable experience. There were a lot of kids out on the playground at recess and I don't remember ever getting a turn on the Big Wheels. I resigned myself to playing on the train shaped metal sculpture.

T.V. shows and movies always show preschool kids getting a snack and then taking a nap. We never got snacks or naps. Although if you read my previous post you'll know that I wasn't too disappointed about the latter.

I can still remember picture day in preschool. We were all lined up in rows on the little bleachers for the class picture. One of the teachers had told us to be good and quiet and I followed instructions to a T. In the picture I appear in my light blue turtleneck and overalls with my arms folded tightly across my chest and my lips zipped. I was so adorable!