BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME...LET'S TALK ABOUT ME

I have been admiring the new clock on my wall; albeit a little sheepishly. Oh, the lengths of embarrassment I will face to achieve The Look in my house. But achieve it I did.

I am a little hesitant to post right now because I feel tremendous pressure about the contents of my blog. See, a friend of mine told me the other day that she really enjoys my blog and that it brightens her morning when she reads it. And suddenly I felt a heaviness about me, when I realized the responsibility I face in making somebody's day a little brighter.

I mean do any of you realize the pressure one faces when one is responsible for the emotional upswing of hundreds...I mean tens....okay ONES of people (ones??) It is EX. HAUST. ING.

But I will soldier on.

So back to my school history. We left off at sixth grade so we are now entering into the school years in which my daughter finds herself now....Junior High.

Seventh Grade - By seventh grade I had really settled in with a nice group of friends in our new town. I had started new friendships over the summer and, to this day, maintain contact with one of the girls who was my best friend through junior high and high school. Her name is Nicki.
I loved school. Seventh grade, for the most part, was the beginning of what would be a wonderful school career for me. I loved everything about school from the time I started seventh grade until I graduated high school. Looking back, I know it was because my home life was dysfunctional and chaotic, but that's another post.
I tried out for the volleyball team but didnt' make it. So I, along with a girl name Janie, decided we'd be scorekeepers and managers. That was the beginning of another perfect friendship that lasted all the way through high school. Janie was FUNNY and we just cracked each other up all the time.
At that time, our junior high was 7th, 8th, and 9th grades. My brother was in 9th grade, and my other brother and sister were in 10th (no, they're not twins....long story). The second semester of my seventh grade year, they closed down our junior high building. It was finally condemned by the state because the fine people of our hometown continually voted against a referendum to give us a new school. As a side note, it was about TWENTY years later that the town finally approved a new school and that was only because somebody actually set fire to the old building and it burned to the ground.
Anyway, so the junior high students had no school building for the last semester of my seventh grade year, while the city worked to get it up to state code. So they put us on split shifts with the high schoolers. The high school students went to school from 7:30 a.m. until noon; and the junior high students went from 12:30 until 5 p.m - in the same building. If we had track practice or anything, it was held at 10:30 in the morning - BEFORE SCHOOL.
This was a wonderful set up for my one brother and me, because we got to sleep in and sit around all morning watching "Please Don't Eat the Daisies" and "Gomer Pyle, USMC." It was a great set up for my older siblings because they had the whole afternoon to do homework and to watch "General Hospital" and "The Mike Douglas Show."
I don't think it was a very good set up for my mom, having four teenagers on two different schedules. I cannot imagine how she juggled that....

Eighth Grade - In eighth grade we got to go back to our old building which had been made new. Although only half of it was made new; the other half was closed down. It was a HUGE building so that wasn't a problem. In eighth grade I ran track and was in student council, both of which I had done in Seventh grade. I also competed in a literary contest, in which I memorized a 'one person play' kind of thing. I played a nervous mother who was in the audience of a literary contest, watching her daughter participate. It was a "humorous piece" and I got first place so I guess I had the knack for it.
In eighth grade, two friends and I were given the privilege of running copies on the mimeograph machine in the teachers' work room. Remember those? They left the paper kind of wet, and the ink was purple, and you always smelled it when you were handed your paper?

Did anyone else smell it to get a whiff of the wet ink?

Anyway, we were MIMEOGRAPHING these papers and the machine got jammed, and all the paper literally became airborne as it came off the roller and started flying into the air. And it quickly picked up speed! We were slack jawed and helpless. I do not know how we fixed it, but when it was finally over there were literally hundreds, and I do mean hundreds, of papers on the floor, on the work tables, on the storage cabinets. It was like an adolescent Lucy and Ethel (plus a friend) had been set loose in the teachers' work room.

And it smelled like wet ink.

Ninth Grade - Wait...my husband just said "boy you're writing a long one today..." so maybe I should post High school tomorrow?

Should I? Shall we take a vote?

All those in favor of my stopping now, please raise your hand....

Wow, that's a lot of hands.....