old school

i think i mentioned having recently found lots of childhood paraphernalia.

let's see...there was the elementary school report on pollution. it was crudely constructed in alternating red and black crayon, clipped newspaper and magazine photos, and the occasional sticker--all held together in a flimsy booklet i'd created by folding some thin paper in half.

there was also an old, quite disgusting looking, yellowish sling that i'd earned after falling off my brother's bike while totally tearing it up on our make-shift obstacle course. i remember this set of trees that were so very perfect for weaving in and out of. i think i lost it after the third one on some wet grass. i guess i kept it because i'd really wanted a cast but unfortunately my arm wasn't broken, just sprained. but i had my friends sign it anyway.

countless book reports in those old school report folders took up most of the box, along with some notebooks and artwork from middle school. there was this dictonary i made in one of my enrichment classes full of words that my group and i had created where we saw the need for verbiage. it's so awful. about 80% of the terms end in -itis.

oh yes, and my writing! one day i'll have to try to photgraph or post the laminated edition of my original work, "The Kingdom of the Blabbing Birds." i'm not going to lie; it's a thrilling story, captivating, and full of tangible characters and talking animals. oh, and it's *so* illustrated with colored pencils and printed out on one of those old dot-matrix printers.

of course, there were also the yearbooks. in that musty, thinly dusted cardboard box were my two elementary school (marking the meeting of my mother and stepfather, and subsequent move to another town, a bigger town), one junior high and one senior high school yearbook.

and while i know it's certainly the best to reminisce in your own yearbooks, i'm going to share a few of the things that were written in mine by my former classmates. I promise not to list any of the "remember"s. i will, however, share them in their original, unedited form.

today, we'll take a trip back to my middle school years...

1994

Hey baby,
Had a fun year with you, hope to see you next year in NFA. Stay away from naughty little boys this summer. Stay out of jail. --Adam

i must add that Adam was a boy that i totally crushed on, but who also tormented me when i wore ugly clothes--which was fairly often.

2: Kristine
Hey hunny! Whats up? Well, this year went by very fas and your a good friend. I really don't know what to say so Im going to go! Bye [heart] Lena

i have no idea who Lena is. and yeah, it was written with pink ink.

Kristine,
What's up? This year, I had fun picking on you. I don't think I would have pass at least half of my classes without you. You always got mad at me when Jamie did it all. Your a good friend and I hope to see you next year. But I'll see you over the summer because Chris and me are coming to your house. Goodbye, have fun.
Nick

Nick wrote his in script. I actually still see this boy, occasionally, at the gym. We have yet to acknowledge each other. the teachers he and I tormented in junior high also belong to the gym. I've already posted about my long-overdue apology to them.

...we'll pick up where we left off tomorrow kids...