Thursday 13: School Daze

Thirteen Things about Things I remember about school 1. Head Start. This was a program for poor kids to get them prepared to go to kindergarten. I think that Mom signed me up to get me out of her hair mostly. I don’t remember doing anything really like school work… just getting on the bus each day and going. And the strange thing is they had us pee into Styrofoam cups and toss the previous day’s pee outside at one point. I don’t know why and I don’t remember telling my parents about it either. I also remember sticking a bead up my nose during nap time…I never napped. Updated: Although I can't be sure, I believe that the peeing in cups thing was that the septic tank was in need of emptying and they were trying to conserve space...but that doesn't explain why they kept the pee overnight? 2. Kindergarten. Mostly what I remember is that one of my best friends had an old bed spread for her nap-pad and instead of napping (which remember from before, I never did) we would pull strings out of her bed spread and make ourselves jewelry… nice orange jewelry. 3. 1st grade. We learned to read “See Spot run” books. 4. 2nd grade. Teacher was Mrs. Thomas. She taught me to HATE school. I guess that’s why I remember her. Her daughter was a year ahead of me…not a nice kid. 5. 3rd grade. The first part of the year I was living with my Aunt & Uncle in Florida and was doing really well in school there. Nicer teachers. Well I liked those teachers much better than old Mrs. Thomas! But after Christmas break I was back to my parents and back to my old school. My teacher was Mrs. Graves. I remember getting to stand in front of the class as punishment for not doing my homework and at recess I had (for some odd reason) decided to put both of my socks on the same foot…so on one foot I had two socks and the other had none and Angela pointed out that I had only one sock on…and I had to explain that No, I really had two on, they were just both on the same foot. 6. 4th grade. Teacher Mrs. Brooks. She was also a member of my Church. So trying to be silly, I put my name down on my paper as my middle name… She knew it was my paper, but I’m not sure if it was that it was by handwriting, because there was a paper from a kid with a name she didn’t have and no paper from me or if she knew my middle name from Church. Probably the first. I don’t remember too much more about 4th grade than that. 7. 5th grade. Teacher Mrs. Davis. She would turn out the lights and read to us each day. She read us the Fudge books by Judy Bloom and maybe the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary. I also remember doing a book report on “Harold and the Purple Crayon” for her class. 8. 6th grade. My parents separated (another 13 story?) and I was living with my Mom and going to school again in Florida. In FL 6th graders went to a school on the other side of Tampa with only 6th graders in it. I had one teacher for a while and then they switched us to another teacher in another room…I kinda think the first teacher had some medical problems. I learned how to play chess that year and how to write a limerick … “There once was a cat named Cleo, who fell in love with a fish named Leo, he jumped into the bowl, because of his soul, and now Cleo and Leo are a Trio!” By Christmas break Mom decided that she couldn’t take care of me and sent me back to live with my Dad, so back to my old school. 9. 7th grade. We had more teachers that year and lots more subjects. I signed up to take geography… they failed to tell me that after Christmas break that I had to take some weird class about plants. I wasn’t at all interested in that class, so I just went back to geography class. The teacher of geography class was the councilor who had “helped” me sign up for the classes and he just let me stay in his class. But since I had already taken the class, I had to write a research paper on a country. I picked Korea…which is very very odd since I ended up going to live there later. 10. 8th grade. I had two horrible male teachers that year. The first was Mr. Gilbert for LA history/civics. He belittled students in front of everyone. There was a new boy at school and I thought he was cute, so I had tried to become his “girlfriend”… but he chose Laura instead. I had cried about this all during English class. Somehow the news got to Mr. Gilbert and when I got to his class while handing back our most recent test, he announces to me/the class that he has bad news… 1st the new boy likes Laura, not me and that I failed the test. Nice… The second horrible male teacher was the gym teacher. We had lunch before that period, but they had us go to class and leave our books there…line up to got to lunch…have lunch and then recess and then go back to gym class. So I had dressed up that day (nice dress and high heals). Not sure what the big deal was but we always rushed over to be first in line for lunch. I was first with a few of my friends behind me. Coach says to us “Hello ladies, and you too Renee.” I didn’t find his little joke at all funny and I kicked him, trying to dig the heal of my shoe into his calf. So as punishment he sends me to the back of the line. I guess that was pretty good considering what I had done. 11. 9th grade. Finally living back with my Mom in FL. And this school is a Jr. High school with 8th & 9th graders. When my Mom called back to LA to get my records transferred the secretary says “she should have stayed here…she would be in High School now.” If I had stayed in LA in High School the older kids would have “hazed” me as being a freshman… but moving to FL I was in the older class. Although since I registered late I was put into a homeroom class with kids with last names beginning with A… My last name began with R. There was also a guy with the last initial of W…there may have been a few other “extra” kids too, I don’t remember. I do remember that W left a very crude note in my locker one day, but I saw him do it and purposely made sure that he didn’t see me get the note. I got the note during a class that I had that was near my locker. I didn’t tell W that I ever got his note until 12th grade. 12. 10th grade. First year in High School. Our school was built like a mall… A big huge main mall where our lockers & eating area were with halls extending off of the mall for all of the classrooms. There was no “hazing” of sophomores at this school; at least I didn’t see any. In fact I had lunch each day that year with a Senior & two Juniors…all guys. A friend of mine introduced me to them. 13. 11th & 12th grades. The teachers in the math department had finally figured out that I needed to be put in the advanced math classes (because I was blowing the curve for the regular classes). I did okay in the advanced classes, they also put me in advanced English classes too. I didn’t care too much for the homework…I never did like homework. If it didn’t get done at school, I didn’t want anything to do with it. I managed to pass all my tests without it. I got a scholarship to the college of my choice and went there the fall after graduation…for only one semester. I was dating that guy W from 9th grade and he didn’t like it too much that I was smarter than him (or I applied my intelligence in a more constructive way than he did). So being so stuck dumb by love I gave up school for him. Eventually (4 years later) I wised up and left him to go back home to my Mom. Of course I couldn’t afford to go back to school on my own; I had to earn a living as Mom surely couldn’t afford to pay for me. So it wasn’t until I got married that I went back to college. I still don’t have a degree, because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! ~*~Jen~*~ladydaria~*~Mar~*~Uisce ~*~MamaMama(Mel)~*~tanya~*~mentalexcrements~*~KDubs ~*~LazyDaisy~*~Lisa~*~Veronika~*~Chickadee ~*~FrogLegs~*~Better Safe Than Sorry~*~Jane~*~Nicole ~*~Kimmy~*~Stacie~*~Courtney~*~Froggie ~*~Audra~*~Shash~*~Lena~*~Killired ~*~Kelly~*~Texas_Ivy10~*~Ruth~*~laura ~*~WendyWings~*~e~*~ (leave your link in comments, I’ll add you here!)Please make my life easier and put your link in the comments. Otherwise I have to look up your profile and then try to figure out which page your 13 is on and if you have multiple pages or aren't using blogger it's a huge mess. Sorry to whine about this, but when you've gotten this many comments it take a long time...especially with dial up...have pitty on me folks. Please? :D

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