10 Memories from My School Years

meme challenge #10...

i'll be focusing on elementary school, because that seems to be where my most interesting memories come from:

1. on the way to our bus stop one morning, my step-sister, alicia, ran as fast as she could to get there. normally we raced, but this morning, she just took off first. this meant that she was first in line. she got the best seat on the bus, etc, etc. so, about 15 feet from the bus stop, i picked up a rock - a piece of gravel - and flung it at her, hitting her square in the side of her head. i've never been so accurate.

2. in second grade, on a summer evening, we weren't tired at bedtime. since it was still light outside, we crawled out of our bunk beds, and read by the window, where we could very discreetly hold the curtain open just enough to allow enough light by which to read. for some reason or another, my mom came in and caught us reading, and took those two books away for two weeks!

3. i was quite the little entrepreneur in elementary school... in fact, i loved using my allowance to buy items {nothing token, just shaped erasers, stickers, colorful pencils and pens} from the school store, which was only open every other wednesday, which i could then sell at a markup on the playground. i mean, ya gotta pay for the convenience of having it available every day, right? ;)

4. we had a tetherball set up in our back yard and used to play regularly, though my step-sister played more than i. our dogs had a pen that spanned the length of the back yard, and was in plain sight of the tetherball pole. from watching us play, they learned to play, and would to amazing jumps and leaps and flips to hit that ball with their snouts. we lost many a tetherball to their puppy teeth.

5. my first day in first grade, a new city, a new school, just my mom and me. mom took me to school and said her goodbyes, and i cried. i didn't want to be alone with these strange people. but i got used to it, and warmed up to the teacher, who was male - i thought this was *very* strange, and the reading loft, which was *so* cool. wish i had a reading loft in my house!

6. in kindegarten, i had a crush on a boy named Joel, who had a silver caps on all of his lower teeth. he was terribly cute, or maybe it was just because when he flashed his toothy grin at you, it sparkled.

7. in fourth grade, my step-dad caught me chewing gum before breakfast, and made me stand in the corner.

8. i begged my parents to let me change my name to "jessica", inspired by the show "Saved By The Bell", {i'd go by "jessie" of course...} because my step-sister found a way to rhyme the word "bathroom" with "kathryn" {keeping in mind of course, that i wasn't "kate" until highschool}. i was gung ho on this until they started calling me "messy jessie"... to deter me, i'm sure. but still...

9. i wore a black leotard with a flannel plaid shirt over it. *shudder*

10. i paid about $40 of my own saved spending money to get a perm. i told the girl i wanted "waves" in my hair, but she used these things called "boomerangs" {really, i should've known} which are really skinny lengths of plastic tubing. my family called me "curly sue" for weeks.