My first thoughts that I can remember about going to school was simple. I was going to a place where bigger kids went. There were even bigger kids in the higher number grades. Although I did not see them much, I always had a sense that they were pretty cool.
I started attending kindergarten in 1979. The school I went to was called White Oak. A yellow school bus came each to my front door and picked me up. It would then continue down the road towards the train tracks and stop just before crossing. White Oak seemed pretty far away. I did not know how to get back home without the bus. The school was huge. There were many floors. My class was on the bottom floor. Lots and lots of kids were there. I could not count them all if I wanted to. They were a lot bigger then I was. Someone had told me that the school had ever grade up to twelth.
My first classroom was pretty open. There was an area with some toy kitchen stuff. Another area had clothing that you could dress up in. Large windows were lined accross one side with a door outside next to the corner. There were small tables and chairs around them for us to set at.
My first teacher escapes my mind, but I do remember doing something interesting for her. I had cut out a lot of letters and designs from card board paper and had delivered them to her desk and offered them to her. She was happy to see me and then I went back to class.
During my elementary and middle school years, I remember black and green chalk boards in the front of the class. I liked it when the teacher used different colors other then white, yellow, or a pale blue. We would raise our hands to take the erasers outside and clap them together to get the chalk out. The chalk would come off and create dust clouds around us.
The school yard was pretty big. It had a paved black trail going around the whole grounds. There was a play set that we could climb on with an orange colored sand that had small rocks in it.
I would eat sandwiches made from bologna and mustard that tasted really bad. Sometimes I would get the kind where there were olives in the meat. I liked pulling out the olives and eating them first. Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches were the best of all of them. There was usually a small treat like raisens that accompanied the lunch. It was very rare for me to buy a lunch. The container I used to carry my lunch was a rectangular box with a curved top.
I remember there was a large cafeteria there where the walls would come apart. The ceiling seemed to be three stories high. There was a play there where we all played cowboys and indians. An upside-down brown paper bag with holes cut out for the arms and head was used as my costume. We painted the bag with triangles and lines that reminded us of indians. A head band was made out of colored feathers and construction paper. The final touch was lipstick put on my face to look like war paint. We ran in circles. There was another play called the Nut Crackers Sweet in the cafeteria as well. A lot of gray tables were put together for the stage and this time a lot of the lights were off. I did not have a part in this play.
A petting zoo came to the school at one time. I remember seeing goats, sheep, a pig and a duck. You could come up to them and pet them. The sheep liked drinking out of an oversized bottle.
On one of our field trips, we went to a large apple farm where they at really big crates of apples. These crates were about six feet wide and long. They stood about three to four feet high.
During my first grade year at White Oak, I was constantly bringing home coloring papers. My mother had collected a very large binder of them. In the middle of the school year, she came in to speak with the school and complained that the only thing that we were doing was coloring. I was pulled out and had home tutoring by my Aunt Winnie. She had a lot of ditto’s with Star Wars themes to teach me a lot of stuff. I had also attended Summer School where kids were reading very slow. It had annoyed me at how they got stuck on every word. I did not like Summer School at all. I hated it. Even though my old teacher had resigned when the next school year came, I returned to the first grade at a different school.
I moved around from school to school during my early elementary years. During the summer breaks, my parents would take us out to theme parks. The most popular was Hershy Park. We had also gone to Kings Dominion, Bush Gardens, and Six Flags. I always wanted to go to Disney World. Each year school mates would always talk about there vacations and a couple would always say something about it, and the long lines as well.
How to Write Your Autobiography
by Patricia Ann Case
Preserving Your Family Heritage
This book has made it very easy for me to remember a lot of my past experiences. It is really easy to follow along. The first couple of chapters explain why and how to write an autobiography. It is really cheap if you buy it from AltaVista – and I will also get a cut of the profits if a lot of people buy them through the link on this page!
(Purchased December 28, 1999)