1st Grade
(You may want to start at the beginning. Or not. My life is a Choose Your Own Adventure book).
On a field trip with my Brownie Troop, one of the mother-volunteers accuses me of saying “shit”. I am bewildered. The other Brownies stare at me in disbelief. My troop leader informs me she will have to tell my mother. I cry.
My mother defends me. If I say I didn’t say it, I didn’t say it. Later, privately, she tells me that sometimes, adults get things wrong. I am amazed.
In school we are learning about the Animal Kingdom; fish, mammals, reptiles, birds. Mrs Harrington goes around the room calling out names of animals and asking us to state their classification.
“Zebra!” she calls to Nathan*, a boy sitting near me. He’s unsure of how to answer.
“Fish!” I whisper helpfully. I laugh with the rest of the class when he repeats this answer aloud.
The girls in Mrs Harrington’s class are obsessed with getting braces like the older kids. We con Naveen into giving us each one of the many thin, metal bracelets her grandmother brought her from India. We bend them in half and put them in our mouths. Smile! We look like 6th graders!
* Name changed to protect those who trusted me too much in 1988.
It’s always funny to see early childhood pictures like that next to the pictures of who that person will turn into.
I’d have to say that little kid ended up pretty well.
Why thank you.
Did you say shit? Love, love, love the school pictures<3
No! We were going around making up rhymes for the word “sick” and I said “shick”. I learned to leave the SH alone.
Did you mean the razors?? I am just not sure I recognize that word:) I was moved immediately from the highest reading group in second grade for saying “is”land instead of “I” land….man we both got hit pretty hard!