So by now, most of you have gotten back to me about your love of the new user photo. I’m thrilled that you like it, since when I ran across it a couple of weeks ago, I felt compelled to share it with you all, my faithful homies. I know I said I was going to nuzzle up in the bed, but after writing one post, I felt like writing another, so after you read this one, keep it scrollin’ and enjoy a classic ramble since I know it’s been awhile. I’m trying to get back on track and deliver you the quality posts that I’d set out to bring you each time. I feel like I’ve been neglecting my readership, lol. Not that y’all have time to check it out, but still … when you do, like your good neighbor State Farm, I should be there for ya.
I know at some point last year I’d taken you back to rainy days at Dacusville School, but now I’d like to take you back to the first grade me, the girl in the picture. Part of it is an exercise for the self, because looking at that photo makes me curious to look back and see if I’ve become any of what that little girl thought she would become. Am I still as sweet and hopeful as she appears to be? I’m just as earnest and eager, I can tell you that. But anyway … let’s “picture it” shall we?
Picture it. Dacusville. 1986. I’m six years old. Old enough to dress myself, but obviously not old enough to talk my mom out of making me wear what has since been described as a flight attendant tie. I remember how that shirt was just snug enough and white enough to keep me from cutting loose at recess, too. Picture day clothes, while rarely ever to be worn again, were not to be soiled upon one’s return home. No, it was best to come home as you left – clean like a young girl should be, not covered in dust and mud streaks from rippin’ and runnin’ all day long doing stuff you had no business.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. McCoy. She was one of those people who had the kindest face, a face like Casey’s or Mr. Duncan’s, faces that were smile ready. A face that even when angry or irate still conveyed patience and understanding and the possibility of a warm hug.
Looking back one of the great things about public school is that you wind up in classes with people that come from everywhere. In my case, back woods were involved. Nevertheless, it’s not really until you’re older and privy to parents’ conversations that you learned politics are involved, but that’s for another post perhaps.
I don’t know if you can tell or not from that picture, but I feel like I look like most 1st graders should – hopeful and happy-go-lucky. I like school. A lot. It’s fun to learn new words – that island apparently has something called a silent “s” that makes you pronounce it eye-land as opposed to iz-land. It’s nice to be grown up enough to be charged with sharpening your own pencil (remember how fat they were?), and to go to the bathroom down the hall all by yourself.
I liked how every morning I got to come in, go to my own desk, my own space, and whip out my brown paper with the dotted and solid lines across it in red and blue. And I got to write. This is where the love of writing began I’ve realized. Every day I got to write about that day … Today is Monday, September __. Good times.
There was also the Pledge of Allegiance to be said. Something, I realized a few days ago, I was not sure if I remembered fully. It was fun to say snaggle-toothed, that’s for sure. I pedge allegiance to the fwag of the oo-nited states of amewica. And to de wepubwik fwah which it stands. One nation. Under gahd. Wif wiberty and justis fwah awl.
I even remember the day the Challenger exploded and how a few days afterwards, placing my hand upon my heart to say the pledge made me feel so sad. The first time I’d recited the Pledge of Allegiance, I’d been outside and it was a pretty day. So whenever I used to say it, I always imagined I was seeing the flag flapping in the wind against a clear and blue sky – just like that first day. And the sky the day the space shuttle exploded looked just like that on TV.
I think that’s why I used to like kites, too. I was one of those kids who could lie in the grass and stare at the sky for ages. Just looking. Sometimes for cloud-shaped animals, but most times for those jet streaks across the sky – and rainbows. I was, and still am, a bit of a daydreamer. Wholeheartedly a dreamer, too.
I guess being a dreamer led me to believe the best of things were possible for everyone. Like, the best soap was available to everyone. I felt that if I had to take a bath every single night (which I hated, because it cut out my playtime and involved way too much scrubbing) then surely everyone else was, too. There must be soap for everyone so there’s no reason why Chrissy Jones should smell as she does. And just the same, I felt that everyone could read, but this was not so either I discovered.
I felt pretty sure we’d all passed kindergarten, and I knew how to read there, so this was a piece of cake really. It bothered me to hear people stuttering out loud. Not so much because I felt I was so much better at reading than anyone else, but mostly because I wasn’t aware that some people just didn’t get it. And not only did some people not get it, some kids didn’t have the mom I had – the mom who would only let me get the toy of my choice if I was sure to pick out one of those workbooks with it. You remember those workbooks where you would read, or do addition and subtraction, or spell? I don’t remember the name, but I know by the time I was in 4th grade I’d exhausted their selection.
This was the year that Kristofer Clark got hit by a car when he apparently was playing ball with his brother and ran out into the street. For like months afterward, on my deserted street, I stopped and looked both ways and counted to ten before I even crossed it on my bike. I think Mitchell had that broken leg and was in a wheelchair for the longest. He wasn’t in my class, but I do recall seeing him getting wheeled around. He always got special treatment at lunchtimes, since his tray was delivered to him. Sucker.
I also realized my love for Ben Bolt at this time. He was the one who taught me to read island properly. I loved that about him because cross-eyed Chrissy Jones snickered when he corrected me, but I later found out from Ben that the only reason she already knew the word was because she’d been in 1st grade before. Lovely how the concept of being held back comes to you. I felt so sorry for her until it got a bit warmer and her stench returned. Stephanie Pace was in my class, but I hardly remember her except that she liked Ben, too, so maybe I didn’t like her then? Another thing that happens is that you become best friends with people that in a matter of two or three years seems incredible to you. Tracey Lark was my absolute best friend. We did everything together and I got Chrissy to stop bossing her around. Tracey rarely talked to anyone, but she always talked to me and we had tons of fun sharing secrets at recess. I also remember Virgina Durham later being one of the most annoying loud people, but at that time she the best at apples on a stick and she taught me so much, we used to play ourselves crazy. That and shame, shame, shame. She was a good teacher, too. I still remember: shame shame shame. I don’t wanna go to Mexico no more, more, more. There’s a big fat gorilla at the door, door, door. He’ll grab you by the collar and make you pay a dollar. I don’t wanna go to Mexico no more, more, more. Good times.
But the one thing I absolutely remember about 1st grade was that was the year my papa died, and for Young Author’s Day we had to write a story and I wrote about losing him. I don’t even remember what it was about, or what all I said, but I remember trying very hard not to let my tears mess up the pages. I think that was my first time writing my heart out, and when my mom read it and she cried, I think it was the first time I could see how writing could move people. It was like my world opened up and I understood that just how when I read things my whole world felt moved, I could in turn do the same thing. I think I remember that Mrs. McCoy lost one of her sons in the Gulf War, and when I went back to see how she was doing, she was so glad to see me – since by that time I was a big 6th grader. We talked about that book. She told me that she remembered almost every word of it one day as she was going through her son’s things and that it’d helped her. I thought she was just being nice, because she’d always encouraged me to write, but somehow, the endless sparkle in her eyes told me the truth. And look at how right she’s turned out to be, how all these years I’ve been at what I’ve felt to be my best when I’ve poured my heart out on a page.
I just got back to that moment, 19 years later. It amazes me how things get lost in the years as we get older – those tiny truths and epiphanies that now reveal so much about who we really are underneath it all. I am still that eager little girl, wanting to capture in words all that I’m seeing and feeling and share it with the world in the hopes that like me, you too can be amazed and excited to learn.