Gauchos and Mork & Mindy Suspenders

Elementary School Memories

     My first boyfriend was in Kindergarten. His name was Richie and we got in trouble for kissing behind the piano at school. He was pretty cool because he rode his big wheel to school each day.
 When it was time for recess, we would go outside to the back field and there where two forts. They were actually built similar to log cabins with logs overlapping in the corners and you were able to see through the slats. There was a roof and the three sides were full walls, but the fourth side only had a partial wall halfway up. One fort was for the girls and the other was for the boys and we would chase them and drag them back to our fort for a period of time. It was such a fun game. It was sure fun to capture the boys, but it was also fun to get caught and get to go hang out in the boy's fort with them! I think this is where my love of boys started.
     Lunchtime at school is always a kids favorite subject and I was no different in my day! I took a hot lunch and, back then, there was only one line and you had a tray with several divided spaces to hold all of your food. My favorites were spaghetti and chicken nuggets with mashed potatoes and gravy and my least favorites were long dog roll ups (a long hot dog with a breading wrapped around it) and soy burgers! Gross! I never liked the milk either and still don't now that I'm older. The best thing was that once a year our class got to choose the menu for one day.

     You were considered cool if you brought a packet of Kool-Aid to lunch. You would throw away the box and rip a corner off the packet big enough to stick your finger in and then lick the Kool-Aid. You were cool if your finger stayed red or green or purple all day. Hard to believe that we weren't totally wild in class with all of that sugar in us!
     Passing the time once we finished our lunches involved hand-clapping games and string games. There were no cell phones and other electronic devices to play with so we played with each other.
Hand Clapping involved singing songs while clapping your hands together to the beat.  Check out this website for examples of hand clapping. http://funclapping.com/about/
     Some of my favorites were:
     A sailor went to sea sea sea
     Bubblegum on a stick
     I met my boyfriend at the candy shop (go figure, I was boy crazy at a very young age!)
     Say, say oh playmate
     The other fun way to pass the time was string games, especially for the girls. We all wore a long, looped piece of string around our necks so we had them at all times!

          

Jacob's Ladder

Cat's cradle

Witch's Broom

     I was surprised one day to find out it was school picture day and I was not prepared. I was wearing a white turtle neck, gaucho jean pants and Mork and Mindy suspenders! I had also tried a new hairstyle where you slick all of your hair straight back. I was mortified! That was my worst school picture of all time. It seemed that I didn't have much luck looking good in a lot of my elementary school pictures, especially when we had them right after recess.

Yes, I actually wore these! A lot!

     My fourth-grade teacher had the longest toes I'd ever seen on a woman. She always wore these very high-heeled open toe shoes and her toes always came out the front and were actually touching the floor! I have the weirdest memories of my childhood.
     In fifth grade I had my first man teacher for reading class, Mr. M, and I thought he was cute! He had the biggest crush on Raquel Welsh and I had no idea who she was, except for the poster he had of her in our classroom. He also had a poster of Bo Derek from the movie "10", running on the beach in a bathing suit, behind the door.
     Book orders. We would get a thin booklet advertising the books they had for sale that month and, if we were lucky, our parents would let us order some. Sometimes I wasn't able to get any and other times I would get a couple of them at a time. I developed a strong love of books and reading at a very young age and this was one of the reasons why. I usually spend some time every day reading, usually before bed. Nothing like a great book to take you away to another world. I love the feel and smell of a brand new book to this day. My family thinks I'm crazy because I touch and smell every new book that I see!  Libraries are nice for free books but they don't smell as good as books from a bookstore. I was always careful not to break the spines too. Books were to be cherished.
     In sixth grade I had my first "real" boyfriend Pat, the one that asks with the note that says, "Will you be my girlfriend?" The one that has the yes and no boxes for you to check one! We both had Shih Tzu dogs so we would take them for walks a lot. One day he actually came over to my house and we were sitting on the couch talking and his hand accidentally touched mine! I thought I was going to faint and I told all my girlfriends that we touched! That was about the limit of that because I broke up with him, also in a note, about six weeks later! I still have all of the love notes he wrote me!