I keep wondering what words of wisdom I could share at this momentous point in my life. I like to think I'd have lots of things to pass along to others. But I also know that sometimes the best learning experiences we have in life are our own mistakes we make along the way. I think what I would want the younger generation to know is: Navigating through life is like driving a fully loaded 18-wheeler: You have to look at the road ahead, and anticipate changes. You can't make sudden turns or quick stops in an 18-wheeler. You need to be ready well before the appointed turn! And I think life is like that too. So look ahead, and be prepared! One of my all time favorite quotes is: "Hope for the best, be prepared for the worst, and take what comes with a smile."
Looking back, I recognize that I could have used a little more guidance along the way; but I didn't seek it, didn't know I was missing it, until someone was there for me. (Thank you for that!) Funny what we learn when we aren't even looking!
So, I thought I'd reflect on a few memories... First grade. I know that I walked to school, Fair Oaks Elementary. I remember carrying a red and black plaid lunch box, oval I think it was, with a matching thermos. Every day, I had a cheese and butter sandwich. But because I had a thermos, I didn't get to purchase the little carton of milk! I think it was during the first week of school, the boy I sat next to, had an accident, and there was a puddle almost reaching my mary janes! And toward the end of the school year, each class put on a dance of some sort for what would be the year end picnic type day. Parents came to watch. Our class did some kind of circle dance. My memories are vague; but I learned the beginnings of reading and writing in that class. And my love of both is still with me. Drop me a note: I'd love to hear what was first grade like for you!
HUGS to everyone!!
1 comment:
First grade... what a mess. I was developmentally delayed, something which appears to be genetically heritable because my younger son had exactly the save motor skills delays I had. This made penmanship a hurdle which I have never really jumped; it wasn't until drafting class in college that my handwriting ever became legible to others.
Of course, in those days (the early 1960s), tact was a rare commodity among teachers, much less the present brand of political correctness. Thus, I was sent home one day with a pamphlet for my recently-widowed mother entitled "The Slo-Poke," which lectured her (and me, since I could read perfectly well since the age of four - THAT wasn't one of my delays). As though she didn't have enough worries having to take in other folks' ironing and laundry to make ends meet, she had to spare some time from that to take me to the local university (Nicholls State, where I studied for a couple of years twenty-odd years later) to have me looked over by child psychologists and the like and basically declared normal within reasonable limits.
My teacher's own boy-chick was in my first-grade class, a hyperactive, occasionally malignant little twerp who may have had something to do with the lady's lack of social skills. Then again, too many of our teachers saw us as what we were - the offspring of barely literate Cajuns in a fishing village you'd miss if you sneezed passing it nowadays on US90.
The only other thing I can recall vividly from first grade was an announcement from our school's principal, who introduced herself by all three names and announced that the President of the United States had just been shot. Then a teacher's aide pushed our school's big black-and-white television into our classroom, so we could see recaps of the story - Jack Kennedy had been shot in Dallas's Dealey Plaza in a motorcade, and not expected to live.
Hell of a note when that's the stuff you carry with you from first grade, isn't it? Fortunately, things improved.
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