Friday, November 03, 2006

Actually,more than a few... snacks and therapy?

A few things.

Thing the first: it seems I can no longer view blogspot pages, and that includes the Post Secret website as well as my own blog. But apparently I can still post to it. So I'll just continue to do that. Blindly.

I've discovered something I will miss very dearly when the time comes. Well, assuming I don't sicken of it first. I refer to snack noodles. I don't know what else to call them. Basically, you're dealing with a shiny maruchuan-sized package of a baked form of endless cury noodle resembling ramen that either comes pre-seasoned or with roast chicken, fried chicken, or beef flavor packets, however your tastes run. I prefer the chicken varieties myself. But really, could anyone have designed a better food for the snack-minded? Granted, they're really messy (or I'm messy when I eat them). Imagine like centimeter-long noodle crumbles on all surfaces, collecting in your lap, and also in the spaces between the floor tiles. Floors around here really challenge the 5-second rule, so it's gotta be a really big chunk of DRY food on the line before I'll pick it up and consume it. But that's pure digression. So yeah, genius food-- ramen that requires no preparation whatsoever. And I love baked/fried noodles to begin with-- freshman year, that was my favorite salad add-in! I'm positive that they're totally unhealthy, and almost guaranteed to contain high doses of sodium and msg, but... you know, I have time to eat that and not other stuff, so yeah.

So, Billy Joel played on iTunes today, and I was reminded of the same thing I'm always reminded of when I hear that one song (We Didn't Start the Fire): Mrs. Mac's 6th grade world history class. That was, what, the first thing we ever did? Maybe not, because I'm pretty sure it occurred the second day, but I remember going in there feeling so smart, then following along with the lyrics and realizing, hey, I don't get most of this stuff. Were they even real words? Some of them weren't, like, real words. BUT THEY WERE. Thus, that woman, who was so mean at recess, cemented my love of history once and for all, and for 6 years that memory just chilled out, very vaguely, in my brain, until Google and Kazaa showed me the way back to BJ (I had no clue who the hell had written that song and hadn't heard it since that first fateful day). So now I'm pretty sure I can attach some relevance to the majority of the song, with a few of the SE Asia references being the only misses. Maybe some other parts, but I don't remember right now. Anyways, when that came to me today, I felt really happy. Who knew a random thing we did in elementary school back in the day could still stick so strong? Ok, well, maybe I did, cuz there's a lot of other things I remember too, but anyways... thanks, Billy Joel. And thanks, Mrs. Mac (even though you yelled at us during lunch, though I suppose that's unrelated)!

Actually, you know, I got a ton of C's from her and didn't even find out until like the end of the year when she finally divulged that I hadn't been keeping my notebook in the right format. Gee, thanks for correcting me never.

Other things I remember from elementary school:
(ahem)
1. My first day on the bus! I sat with Kristi Lippert and another random girl and together we figured out that we had the same teacher and made fun of her name until I started feeling guilty and stopped. If you're curious, my teacher's name was Mrs. Foxbower, which is actually a really cool name, but admittedly unusual. Really, only 1st graders would make fun of it.

2. Know what games I remember from the playground at Union (1st & 2nd)? Mork & Mindy: the 2-part episode where Mindy gets kidnapped by those space vixens, and polar bears & researchers. No joke.

3. Being incomparably embarassed when... well, I'd better introduce this better. Something I'll remember as one of the most embarassing moments of my entire life (actually, all of them may have occurred in 2nd grade): Mirm & I had spent a whole evening writing up "save the planet" letter addressed to kids in our class. We only completed 4 of them before she had to go home. I had every intention of delivering them though, so I did, during recess the next day. So when we came back, only 4 students had these special little letters in envelopes with their names on them sitting on their desk. They were confused. One of them was Joel, and I think he had a crush on Mirm (which was possibly the only reason I got along with him), so I'm pretty sure that's why his first guess was that it was from her. Nope! Not having opened it, I'm not really sure what he thought it contained, but really everything was suddenly very awkward. I was a shy kid, and eventually the teacher had to come over and find out who passed out the letters and what they were about, and finally Mirm explained that I "really cared about the environment and wanted to get everyone to help." Thanks, Mirm!

4. I once thought that Everybody Counts was a math thing and was really terrified of it even though I didn't suck at math yet. In 2nd grade, Jeffie's mom taught us sign-language for "Happy Birthday" and we got to perform it for the class.

5. Kicking butt at dreidl when we were learning about Hannukah in Mrs. McBee's class.

6. 3rd grade Thanksgiving Feast in the hallway, and clogging the hall so completely that the 5th graders couldn't get through. In the event of a fire, we probably would have had a lawsuit on our hands. Anyways, I had a fringed yellow tunic from Myrtle Beach that I hadn't worn in years, but turned inside out, it made a great Indian stereotype. I wore the outfit (including braids) to Kroger's later because I thought it was so clever.

7. Learning about the mail. I have always addressed letters properly, but hate writing in capital letters so I still don't.

8. Mrs. Atkins' daughter was Miss Teen Ohio? Miss Teen USA? Something like that.

9. We had to pick a country and do a really in-depth presentation of it, and Atkins profiled me to do China. Like, she asked everyone else to pick then literally turned to me and said "Katharine, wouldn't you like to do China?" But I sorta did, so it worked out ok. Then my mother insisted to me that there were two Chinas, thereby really confusing me, and so I did my presentation on two separate Chinas, but created only the Taiwanese flag, which I thought looked nicer. Really funny now that I think of it. But it's not like anyone else in the room knew any better anyways. Some other kid did a country with sugar cane (crap, was that Sean Townsend??), and I've had a craving for sugar cane ever since.

10. Having to recreate a 2-d human body out of paper... it took me many extra months to complete this project. Actually, I forgot about it until my teacher informed my mother about it near the end of the year. I'm pretty sure I put the pancreas in backwards.

11. I was physically blown several feet by a really strong gust of wind on the playground. Into Gary Roberts, I think.

12. During pioneer days in 4th grade, I was so pleased when a certain person's suspenders snapped and he went into, like, rigor mortis (I guess snapped suspenders suck if you're a guy). I was standing a little ways behind him in the turkey line, and he'd just been really obnoxious (a regular thing) to a bunch of people. Basically, it was hands-down the fastest karmic pay-back ever.

13. The lizard who peed on my friend and then dove down the sink drain. "Lizzy go down the hole" was something the guys in our class were fond of saying ever after.

14. When David Singer outclassed Jeff Kovach at the predator-prey game and Jeff rocketed head-first into Brose's desk.

15. When Jeff Kovach and... Singer again?... tore our class mascot ("Noid" the Domino's pizza avatar) in half and little styrofoam balls got all over everything.

16. Being banned from finishing our folktale puppet show when Kristi and I realized we didn't have a horse for the prince (yes, this happened at the very beginning of the show) and I chose to, well, improvize. It was very unwise. Our filmstrip was the best one though, I think. Well, even though it didn't exactly line up with the narration.

17. Tomato juice is the state drink of Ohio. I know this because I had to make a quilt sqare out of it for our Ohio quilt.

18. Mrs. Hammer got REALLY mad at me when I tried to be creative with the way I wrote my answers to her math problems. I was trying to save space and paper. Anyways, she handed it back to me with these words: "If you ever write your answers like this again, you will get an F." And I think her teeth were actually gritted. Scared the crap out of me.

19. Mrs. Hammer also taught us how to hula, and I remember her yelling at Sean Boyd because he was being really funny about it. Anyways, our hula routine was to the first few lines of "Surfer Girl" which I will always remember.

20. Mr. Schaeffer taught us math too. I can't remember what math, but I do remember the Bang Bang Game, which Alice Chang may have been the first to solve.

21. I remember feeling like the universe was going my way when, during our first fungi lesson, I actually had my fingers crossed that the teach would ask us how fungi reproduce, and my wish came true! I got to answer and everything, my hand was up in a FLASH.

22. There was a book in the library that has to rank among my favorite books of all time. Basically it was a massive black volume detailing several hundred poisonous plants. Not humorous. No references to current events. Just basic statement of facts and consequences. I had it on power-renew, and must have read it more than once. Oddly, the only thing I remember is that mango sap has the same qualities as poison ivy.

23. When, having run out of non-fiction reading material for the moment, I turned to a series of thin orange hardbacks that summarized the plot of every old-Hollywood horror film ever made. Therefore, I know the plot of The Werewolf, It Came from the Black Lagoon, The Phantom of the Opera, and others without ever having to have seen the movies themselves, which would probably still scare me, I'm such a sap.

24. I won the best Hawaiian smile contest.

25. Bob Sendelbach won the best Hawaiian hat contest, with my hat, even though it was too small for his head and we couldn't seem to make it any bigger.

26. Eschewing recess for art delivery with Kristi, and eventually Brandy and Natasha. This meant that we could be complete goofballs in the empty hallways and look at everyone else's work. I hit my head on a doorknob on one of these occasions, and yes, I was taller than all doorknobs by then. When I recounted this story to Mr. Heflin a year later, he told me it was impressive.

27. We apparently outgrew Reading Rainbow partway through 4th grade, and so they replaced it with this cracked-out future adventure where Earth was taken over by giant heads called "Wipers" (characters could not say this word without every boy in class laughing his head off). Random kids saved the world by using the Dewey Decimal system. BUT, after 4 years in public school libraries, we all already knew how to use the DD system. So...

28. Kristi used to finish all of our assigned books so much faster than everyone else that they had to advance her a copy of the next book. I was second fastest reader after her, but she could actually speed-read out loud, which I think shocked a lot of people.

29. "Why does Fluffy look so puffy?" Best line from the book Skinny Bones, which the woman had the audacity to REWRITE for who knows what reason, and now this line no longer exists.

30. Brose actually read A Boy in the Girls Bathroom to us. What a gem.

31. I was one of two students who showed up at Brose's wedding. I was actually late because my parents couldn't find the church and had to enter after the bride. I then left immediately after the ceremony, but he did see me there!

32. We had to write stories using our vocab words, and I elected to write eclectic tales about jade shoes (a great story that my parents threw away... don't worry, I threw an honest tantrum about it) and also parodies of Snow White in which the dwarves were given interesting new personalities (one of them was named Superman). I was always up late doing this. And also really pleased with myself.

33. In the 5th grade, I encountered one of the most amazing teaching presences of my life. Get this: Miami U. student teacher Mr. Heflin was so charismatic that on the last test he ever gave us, the last question was phrased like so, "Write everything you know about energy." Kids wrote until he told us to stop, basically, and filled the pages up. When asked afterwards how we felt, the majority of us said something about how our limbs ached.

34. Another Heflin moment: he gave us some assignment to work on silently, and a few minutes in shouted for us to freeze. Then he told us to look around the room and started laughing at us. Apparently, he'd never witnessed so many outlandish sitting positions. And he was right-- some people were really contorted. Legs were bent here and there, people were sitting sideways, some were backwards. As for myself, I was standing, bent over one of the small sides of the desk.

35. One of the proudest quips of my life: we'd just changed the seating arrangement, and Nick G. turned around to ask, "How's the weather back there?" My response: "Um... (thinking) cloudy. With a chance of meatballs." And he laughed! Another one of my favorite books, by the way.

36. Heflin played The Raven for us on Halloween, and The Shadow radio play once too. He then made fun of us because most of us were still oriented towards the stereo, even though there was nothing to look at.

37. One day, in the middle of group work, Heflin told us to stop and revealed that he and another student had been conducting an experiment on us... they'd been playing a song, and when the volume was low, we were quiet. When they turned it up, we started being busting-at-the-seams loud. Lowered again, we quieted down. And so on. It felt a little intrusive, but it was still pretty cool.

38. In a unit designed to teach us about check-writing and budgeting, Heflin attached various urban legends to real towns in Ohio (Waynesville, for example), then told us that we were going on investigative missions to one of the sites. I was in a group with Kara and Bob, and Kara was a very clever girl. In order to save money, she prefaced each catalog purchase option with "Bob, are you tough?" He inevitably answered "yes" each time, and thus she would reply, "Ok, so only 2 sleeping bags... two tents... two... so on." By the time he started taking some initiative, his only real allowance was a unit of malted milk balls. The only flaw in this was the fact that we moved on to the next lesson without any closure as to how our missions went. When we rebelled, he made up some really unsatisfying finale and moved on anyways.

39. We had to write short reports on one of the ancient Central American civilizations, and mine was the... Incans? Whoever it was, there were animal sacrifices but no human sacrifices. Anyways, I colored a really cool stone and grass border around it and thought it was the greatest thing ever.

40. I was injured twice in 5th grade. The first time was during a game of State Tag, I believe the destination was Texas, and I slipped and fell. At the end of the year, I was standing on the US map with some friends as the next class was released from lunch. Suddenly, I was the victim of a damn hit-and-run, when some tall kid pretty much trampled me and I had deep scrapes/bruises on 3 out of 4 limbs. Several people claimed that my assailant was Jermaine, but I still don't know for sure. Again, I'm pretty sure I was standing on or near Texas.

41. Kelly more or less led activities on the playground, and others in the group were Kristi, Sarah, Mirm, Emily, Liz, and Christine already. We played all sorts of tag, loitered around the honeysuckle bushes, and marched around as the "Maiderellas" and we had a chant to go along with it too.

42. I... said that someone looked like he was wearing a diaper, and someone actually repeated that to him. For real, I was just making an observation, no malice involved whatsoever. Sorry, man. Come to think of it, something similar happened in first grade, when, during a music lesson, I alleged that Chris Luebbe sounded like a girl. Pure observation, mind you. I didn't even know that that could be insulting to anyone. For real. This behavior wasn't reined in until 10th grade, when Lauterbach put me in my place while we were helping her grade the finals.

43. When Chen first came to our class, I tried to start a conversation with the assumption that he was from Taiwan. Remember that I'd been extremely unclear about this since the 3rd grade. I just remembered that the encyclopedia cited a really long name for Taiwan, and I got it mixed up with the one for China proper, which is actually longer (ok, also, they seemed longer for a 3rd grader than they do now). Anyways, he denied this. I insisted then, that he was wrong, thereby also insisting that he didn't know where he was from. Oops. Anyways, that was our first contact, I think, and it took place in the art room.

44. Mrs. Strand continued the trend of teachers insisting that they wanted to read my first book, based solely on hyper-imaginitive, stuffed with loose ends, crazy-person stories that I wrote in response to what were perfectly normal assignments. When did this trend begin? In the third grade, during the Daily Oral Language and daily journal part of our english lessons, for which my metaphors were a bit more metaphorical. Also, I illustrated everything. In the case of the story that Mrs. Strand read, the illustrations were largely inspired (and sometimes traced from... shhh!) by the Dark Phoenix Saga. Fo realz.

45. In 6th grade, I became a latchkey kid and accidentally put gum in a girl's hair. I can't remember how it happened, but it was definitely an accident.

46. Other than speed, we spent a lot of time playing a game based on mummies.

47. At some point, during a game of dodgeball, some kid threw a gatorball at my face and split my lip. I'm pretty sure whoever it was didn't take an out either. Mr. Lindsey was an odd one... he really liked making us play Antipasto, which he called "Antipasta". My favorite games though were definitely Capture the Ball and Handball. Also I liked volleyball because I liked serving. I disliked the President's Fitness Challenge because it wasn't a fun game.

48. Took my first ceramics class, the only other student was Zach Forry. Two of the best pots I ever made, though I honestly can't remember the degree to which I was actually working alone.

49. All this time, I'd been taking afterschool classes with one of the coolest women ever. At first it was math club, which I dreaded until I got there and discovered that it was Mr. Wizard math and therefore awesome. This woman could divide really fast. After that one year though, she gave up math and taught cooking classes instead. So 4th-6th, I was learning how to make crepes, haystacks, pudding pies, meatballs, apple fritters, and so on. Where did the recipes go? No clue, and it's too bad.

50. Mrs. Niehaus must have been so thrilled to have two Chinese kids she could use to play the Chinese kids in her Christmas pageant.

51. Mr. T, back at Woodland, was the best at teaching pneumonics (mnemonics? i don't have the energy to verify either spelling right now, it's like 3am) for remembering scales. Also, he had the best trombone story ever. Ok, ok, so he was playing in a band at a wedding when the spit valve caught on a woman's dress and took it back up to 1st position.

52. Being randomly invited to the special social studies class. I was really confused during the whole ordeal as to why I was there and who this woman was that was teaching me, thus beginning the trend of me ending up in advanced classes where I don't belong.

53. One day I was making fun of Bob at the drinking fountain and heard myself laughing at my own joke. He asked me why I always laughed after everything I said. I didn't know and got very self-conscious.

54. Was confused for the first time ever during a science lesson. The whole color of light thing, and that eventually led to a lot of unfounded conjecture as to what color REALLY was, and it was sort of upsetting.

55. Mac also played the full unaltered version of Scarborough Fair, which I have been unable to locate to this day.

56. During gym, I led a bunch of the girls in a chorus of "Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to school we go... with razor blades and hand grenades... and so on." Granted, we were entirely unthreatening, but don't you miss those days when you could sing that and not get arrested? Used to be the funniest thing ever, I swear. Well, next to the Gopher Guts song.

57. We spent all of our underclassmen days looking forward to the day that we could play the Ducktails theme song in the band, and it was as sweet as I'd hoped.

58. Me and Christine were partnered up for the Egyptian mask project, and our mask was hot. Later, Chen would look at it and say, "Whoa, Nefertiti!" and I got mad because I couldn't tell what he meant by that. Was it an insult? Apparently not. Oops.

59. For our solar system project, I baked a cake. Other people did a lot of research and built models and mobiles. I baked a sponge cake, layered it with apricot jam, draped it in fondant, and planted a green fondant alien in the middle next to the big fondant spaceship (not based on any existing NASA design). It was an intense effort, but... now that I think of it... it was a cake. Cheney loved it though, and I think I got an A anyways. I also learned the true meaning of not eating your cake too-- my mom wouldn't let me since it had been on display for so many days.

60. The art teacher may have yelled at me for visiting too often, but then she started giving me Starburst jellybeans, then made bracelets for me and another girl for helping her out. I outgrew it really fast, but it's still really pretty.

61. I hate rule-breakers. The most upsetting rule-breaking experience happened afterschool at latchkey when we were playing mat-tag and Adrian broke like every single rule in the book. I was so furious I cried and actually hyperventilated until my mom got there. Overreaction? I still probably would have attacked him if I weren't sorta better than that.

62. No haunted house gym class was better than Mr. Losh's back at Union.

63. In Davis's class, we had to pick interview partners out of a hat. I picked Mirm and she picked me-- I thought it was crazy!

64. School carnivals were the best. The best of the best? Spin art, cakewalks, face-painting, cotton candy, hay rides, fishing, the lollipop game, and, in 5th grade (I think), the country music seizure room. Wasn't a country fan even then, but Kristi was, and there were black lights. There was a game I was really good at, but I can't remember what it was because I was always afraid to play it.

65. Cheney yelled at me for talking in class one day when I knew for a fact my mouth was shut. She made me go to the back of the line. I wanted to cry!

66. One of the finest feelings? Having your name called on the intercom at the end of the school day.

67. Back in 2nd grade, I was disciplined. We had to sit on the stool next to the behavior chart with our clothespins on it. Being an examiner, the first thing I did was start examining all the details of the chalkboard, the chart, and the clothespins. McBee totally yelled at me for enjoying myself. I wasn't aware that being a good girl and also enjoying myself while being punished was a bad thing. I didn't know what to do.

68. Back to 2nd grade again, I had an imaginary white tiger. It chilled out under my desk during class. I also spent a lot of time staring out the window (they had to move me) and organizing the items in my desk.

69. When did I start turning assignments in on time? 4th grade, mid-year. I never understood the deadline concept. Then there was this terrifying sub, the first, the original, Fishface (subsequent subs were then Fishface 2, 3, 4, and so on. I was not the one who developed this labeling system, rather, it surfaced organically among the boys in the class). During her week as our teacher, I started consistently turning things in on time, and was good about it until senior year of high school when there was a slight mishap. And you know it was downhill from there.

70. As part of spelling in the 1st grade, we had to write every word 3 times in one spot in a different color crayon. Thing is, I was a really good speller, and I hated this assignment. Know why? Because I would drive myself crazy trying to devise unique color combinations for each word. This simple assignment would often keep me up really late. My mom would usually insist that I cheat on the color schemes, but this was something I would never do UNTIL one day I got so fed up that I just picked up any 3 random crayons, no matter how much they didn't go together, and write the word once, holding all three at a time. In 5th grade, we had to do something similar, write each word 3 or 5 times, but separately, and in pencil. The only way I could think to make this go faster was to go one letter at a time vertically, then fill out a line horizontally, then vertically for the next letter, then fill out another horizontal, and so on. It was something I'd developed in Chinese school when I was really young. Heflin caught me doing this one day and publicly chewed me out as an example to the other students. But I could already spell all these words! I aced every spelling test!

71. In 5th grade, Melissa C. recited a lot of, if not all of, the Gettysburg Address. I stopped paying attention almost right away, so I'm not really sure.

72. Back at Woodland, a praying mantis got loose in our class one day and girls actually got on top of their chairs and screamed. I used to hunt earthworms in storm drains, so this was a total shock for me, since I'd only seen that type of behavior in cartoons. Incidentally, my nightcrawler days ended during a school trip to a campsite where I tried to pull a worm out of a heap of dirt clods and grass and inadvertently bisected it.

73. In the third grade, we got a new student, Sean... Hennessy? He was like the 3rd or 4th Sean, I think. Anyways, he was really bad-tempered when first showed up, probably because he'd had to move and everything. I think ultimately everyone sort of understood, but he was pretty nasty. He began his Woodland career by insulting the teacher and sort of... well it's weird cuz I'd never seen anything like it before, but she had to physically remove him from the room and he definitely fought back. I remember practicing cursive Z's one day... we were supposed to grade our own practice sheets, and since no one really checked, we generally gave ourselves A's, or B's if we were feeling more honest than usual. He gave himself an F+ and I've always thought that the + was kind of funny. He finally found his place when Atkins' stapler broke and he fixed it. From then on, he was the stapler expert and thus acclimated to his new environment.

74. Remember how cursive was supposed to be so important? Everything had to be in cursive, but once we got to junior high, the teachers threatened us against ever using cursive.

75. I used to get really bad headaches, and was comfortable enough in the 4th grade to soak paper towels, place them on my forehead, and sit with my head back, water dripping down my neck.

76. We had a substitute teacher one day, I think it was one I was fond of. Maybe this was in 3rd grade. Anyways, she was standing by the door that morning before class had begun, and a girl... Brittany? Lauren? got up and said she needed to go to the bathroom. She'd barely cleared the threshold when the sub grabbed the big trash can and thrust it in front of her, and the girl puked hardcore. The sub was so happy, she spent a few minutes telling us about how good it was to have a rapport with others and be able to look at their faces and read their minds.

77. In 6th grade, Sarah Fredricksen and I resolved to join the drama club when we got to junior high. Actually there was no such thing until 9th grade, and she'd moved away by then.

78. One day in 2nd grade, I zoned out on the bus ride home and thought I'd missed my stop. I started panicking and involved the bus driver before we realized that we were in my neighborhood and we hadn't come to my house yet.

79. On the bus in 4th grade, Kristi and I amused ourselves by dueting "A Whole New World" over and over again, switching parts, for many many many days. No one ever said anything.

80. My first 3 years of elementary school, I always kissed my teachers on the cheek before I left for the bus.



So... maybe that's ok for now. I'm really tired. My arms are also seizing up-- this typing environment here's not the best. It felt really good though, to go through all those. I always say that my memory is crap, but there are a lot of things that really stand out that I might always remember. Of course, my memory might be even more faded now at 4am. How obsessed does one have to be to stay up until 4, typing the highlights of their formative elementary years? I might not be in a place to answer that question objectively. Anyways, it was really therapeutic, and I think I may do more reminiscing soon... if in smaller chunks.

If you actually read all those, you now see much of how I became who I am today. You also know how much of dazed, out-of-touch, know-it-all I was and have always been. It's been fun, though!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your capacity for memory never ceases to amaze me. I completely forgot about that Egyptian mask. What happened to it? And Mr. Losh's halloween gym was so hard to leave behind when we got transferred. I totally remember you and Kristy being the fastest readers. I almost forgot about Miriam being called Mirm. I miss her a ton but she never responded to the emails I sent her. And "Maiderellas"? Holy cow.

I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time. I have a suprise for you that I think you will definitely appreciate. It kinda has to do with this entry you made. :) You'll get it with your package.