Sometimes it's insanity...other days it's raw honesty...It ranges from sad, mad, lonely, frustrated and scattered to horny, hungry, silly, sweet,heart tattered ...
You just never know.
I'm a lot like this I suppose...
You never know what surprise you're gonna get.
I try to be real...I try not to hold back. I mean, part of the reason I write in this blog is to learn to love myself for myself. I write in here so I can come back and read what I've written and maybe learn a little bit about myself.
(So far I've learned that I'm unstable and should probably be medicated.LOL)
Ahem...so where is this all leading you ask?
It's leading to a glimpse from my past. Part of the reality that made me who I am.
Let's transport back in time to 1979...
I was 13 years old. It was my seventh grade year. I was one of 16 kids in my class. There were four girls and twelve boys. It was a small town, so beggars can't be choosers, you know? Our class shared a classroom with the eighth graders. There were four boys and seven girls in their class. So with both classes combined, we had twenty eight in the room. Our teacher was Mrs.Espling, who also happened to be the principal. She taught us everything except math. After lunch we'd change with the fifth and sixth grade classes to go to Mr.Ayotte's room. He was our math teacher.
He is actually responsible for my love of poetry. I HATED math and would struggle through it, not because I couldn't do it but because I hated it. I wasn't a bad student at all and considering that my mother never so much as looked at my report card the fact that I was mainly a straight A student tells you that school was relatively easy for me. I never made an effort.
Mr.Ayotte looked like an English officer.
He spoke with a slight accent but I never really knew what it was. It was there but ever so slight. In hindsight I have to admit, he was a good math teacher. IN fact he was an excellent teacher. But occasionally he would be talking about something and then he'd slam his book shut. Then he'd tell us to close our books and put out heads down on the desks.
Then he'd read to us.
He would read Edgar Allan Poe to us...the Tell Tale Heart, The Raven, The Black Cat and The Monkey's Paw...
I LOVED every minute of it. I mean, I still remember those stories and poems today and that was almost thirty years ago.
He would read Walt Whitman page after page...O Captain, My Captain! was my favorite. His voice would literally sing the words and he would seem to stand ten feet tall while reciting that poem.
Yeah...that's where my love of poetry began.
The boys in my class would hate it. They were rambunctious anyway and could barely stay still.
They were always in trouble.
For the most part, they all got along but there were a few they'd pick on every day. Dean and Ricky.
Dean and Ricky were the targets for every practical joke, every prank, every mean spirited thought.
You know how they say kids can be the cruelest?
Well...it's true.
The school I went to was kindergarten through eight grade. There was no kindergarten until after I'd finished first grade. So I actually didn't go to Kindergarten.
Here's a picture of me on my first day of school.
Guess which one is me?
The school was small. It was literally five classrooms,an office, a kitchen for the cooks to make our lunch in, bathrooms and that's it. No cafeteria, no library, no gym. We had recess outside, unless it was zero or colder. Then we could stay in and play board games.
At lunch time, each classroom would take turns picking up their trays of food from the window at the kitchen. Then we'd return to our desks to eat. The seventh and eight graders actually sat at tables, four to a table. The tables were round and had a small place for books underneath each seating area. Then we'd keep out books in a cubby hole (which we were all assigned) and we'd put out boots and coats and stuff in the coat rack area.
Everything happened in our room...there was easy access to everything.
The boys would take it upon themselves to place chocolate pudding cups in Ricky's boots so he'd mush his foot into it at the end of the day.
Or they'd put chocolate X-Lax in Dean's milk.
Ricky's shoes ended up super glued to the ceiling.
Dean's books were filled with slices of cheese or ham.
Of course not all of the torment was targeted to Dean and Ricky.
Sometimes the boys would just do stupid things because they thought it was funny.
I can remember Paul climbing up the cubby holes and placing a container of milk on the top shelf where no one would see it. It soured of course and smelled NASTY. Mrs. Espling called her husband to come to the school and see if he could find the source. She thought it was a dead rat or mouse or something.
Imagine how pissed off she was when they discovered the sour milk.
Of course if you're going to have food in a classroom, then you're bound to have a few food related problems.
Ray had a crush on Anna. The problem was, so did Todd. So one day when Ray walked in from getting his lunch and saw Todd sitting in his seat, right next to Anna, he picked up his orange and beamed it at Todd's head. It missed and splattered all over the wall behind him.
Everyone stopped what they were doing and then the food fight began. Thankfully I was still in line and wasn't pummeled with SPAGHETTI like everyone else.
I didn't have to clean up either. Debbie, Brenda, Eugene, Greg and I all got to hang outside until the room was cleaned up. Thank god for being last in line..LOL.
My friend Paul had a crush on Debbie. We all sat at a table together. Paul was my best friend. We did everything together. I was a tomboy so it wasn't uncommon for us to walk to the creek together after school to see what kind of trouble we could get into. We'd fish, ride bikes, play ball, climb trees...everything that two boys would do. And yes...I was 13. Boys were my buddies and I had no desire to deal with boys. Besides, my dealings with the male population at home hadn't really left me with a warm fuzzy feeling about boys, ok?
Paul was always getting in trouble. If something went wrong in the class room, Paul was the first one to get blamed.
We were taking a history test one day, when Debbie dropped her pencil. When she bent over, her ass exploded in a GIGANTIC fart.
Everyone laughed.
She turned completely red.
Mrs. Espling whipped her head around and asked, "Who did that?"
Of course no one knew, except for Paul, Debbie and I. Everyone had their heads down concentrating on the test.
Paul raised his hand and said he did it.
Debbie looked up at him gratefully.
Mrs. Espling said, "You know the drill."
He handed her his paper, which she tore up, and then he walked out into the hall.
When we left school that afternoon, they were holding hands.
Pretty romantic stuff huh?
I guess it's a good thing I wasn't terribly interested in boys. While my friends were wearing the latest fashions, I was wearing hand me downs from my cousins. I had yard sale shoes and one or two pairs of earrings. I did have the hemp bracelets, with wooden beads, but that's only because of the head shop crowd that crashed at my mother's house constantly.
I supposed you could say this is what I looked like at 13.
I don't have an actual picture or I'd post it. I suppose my mother might have a couple but I'm not sure.
Yeah...I was different even then.I was a free spirit...doing what I wanted...no one restricting me from doing what I wanted. I was pretty much on my own. You'd think I've have gotten in more trouble than I did.....
Maybe a glimpse into my past isn't the most fascinating thing for you to read but it was nice for me to stroll down memory lane, look the devil in the eye and focus on the rainbow in the horizon instead.
It's important for me to do that once in awhile. It helps me remember where I've been and what it's taken to make me who I am.
With that said...this is my mood today....
Once again the demons from my past have tried to conquer me and once again I emerge victorious. I am a warrior.
It feels pretty damn good too...
Have a great day everyone.
