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bironicWhat's this?
4. Elementary School/Middle School
The summer after fifth grade, our family took a trip out west to visit some national parks. On the flight out to Albuquerque, I was reading a Star Trek: The Next Generation paperback (I remember the books I packed about as well as the trip itself) about Tasha Yar that included a lot of unofficial backstory. There was a scene close to the beginning where young Tasha was kidnapped by a group of hooligans on her home planet and raped, or nearly raped. I remember reading that scene—not explicit at all, this was a YA book, but it hinted at enough—and blushing bright red, as though the people in the airplane seats around me could tell what I was reading.
5. Elementary School
The fields at our elementary school where we would have recess after lunch on fair-weather days was lined with trees and shrubs, some of which bloomed small white or yellow flowers. The girls called it honeysuckle. It may have been. Some days, we would walk out to the edge of the field and pick the flowers, squeeze them and drink the tiny drops inside.
What I liked better than those were these weeds that grew on the field and in the sidewalks. I don't know what kind they were, but they had these spongy, conical, goldenrod … blooms, I guess, about the size of a pinky fingernail, that smelled strong and sweet when I punctured it, and that always remind me of pineapple even though they don't exactly smell like it. They'd stain my fingernails yellow if I picked at too many of them, and my fingers would smell of them for the rest of the day. I remember one particular time when we were walking from our school up the road to another school to practice for a "marathon," and pulling one of the weeds from a sidewalk crack and sniffing it the whole way there.
ETA: OMG! In searching for pictures of honeysuckle, I found these: http://www.wildflowersofontario.ca/pineappleweed.html And look: "When crushed this plant produces a pineapple odour, hence the name." Ha! Mystery solved.
6. Elementary School (hm, I seem to be stuck in an era here)
I remember several sleepover parties from elementary school and middle school. At one of them, at my friend K.'s house, what I remember is sharing around a few bowls of Pop Secret popcorn—back in the days when they came in different colors, and you never knew what color each bag would be (hence, "Secret")—in big plastic bowls, while watching a movie—Uncle Buck with John Candy, maybe—that had a scene in a bar/strip club and a topless woman with stars stuck over her nipples.
4. Elementary School/Middle School
The summer after fifth grade, our family took a trip out west to visit some national parks. On the flight out to Albuquerque, I was reading a Star Trek: The Next Generation paperback (I remember the books I packed about as well as the trip itself) about Tasha Yar that included a lot of unofficial backstory. There was a scene close to the beginning where young Tasha was kidnapped by a group of hooligans on her home planet and raped, or nearly raped. I remember reading that scene—not explicit at all, this was a YA book, but it hinted at enough—and blushing bright red, as though the people in the airplane seats around me could tell what I was reading.
5. Elementary School
The fields at our elementary school where we would have recess after lunch on fair-weather days was lined with trees and shrubs, some of which bloomed small white or yellow flowers. The girls called it honeysuckle. It may have been. Some days, we would walk out to the edge of the field and pick the flowers, squeeze them and drink the tiny drops inside.
What I liked better than those were these weeds that grew on the field and in the sidewalks. I don't know what kind they were, but they had these spongy, conical, goldenrod … blooms, I guess, about the size of a pinky fingernail, that smelled strong and sweet when I punctured it, and that always remind me of pineapple even though they don't exactly smell like it. They'd stain my fingernails yellow if I picked at too many of them, and my fingers would smell of them for the rest of the day. I remember one particular time when we were walking from our school up the road to another school to practice for a "marathon," and pulling one of the weeds from a sidewalk crack and sniffing it the whole way there.
ETA: OMG! In searching for pictures of honeysuckle, I found these: http://www.wildflowersofontario.ca/pineappleweed.html And look: "When crushed this plant produces a pineapple odour, hence the name." Ha! Mystery solved.
6. Elementary School (hm, I seem to be stuck in an era here)
I remember several sleepover parties from elementary school and middle school. At one of them, at my friend K.'s house, what I remember is sharing around a few bowls of Pop Secret popcorn—back in the days when they came in different colors, and you never knew what color each bag would be (hence, "Secret")—in big plastic bowls, while watching a movie—Uncle Buck with John Candy, maybe—that had a scene in a bar/strip club and a topless woman with stars stuck over her nipples.
Re: Sleepovers
Date: Jan. 21st, 2008 09:28 pm (UTC)We were! I'd come home from a weekend's performance and just crash. At that time, I was still working in an office, so I dreaded Monday mornings. I was pretty much a zombie on many Mondays. (I guess that hasn't changed much over the years!)
I didn't know you skipped a grade. That's pretty cool. (Or, wasn't it?)
It was really weird, since the main reason it happened was because I was already attending math classes that were a grade above my current grade—and I'm absolutely hopeless in math. The school seemed to think that just because my older brother was a math genius, I must be one too. (I wasn't.) He ended up having to commute to high school for math classes when he was in 8th grade, and both the school and my parents didn't want to deal with that in my case, so they just moved me directly from 5th to 7th grade, where I totally failed math but excelled in reading and history, which were much more to my taste.
Other than the sleepover problem, it wasn't too traumatic socially, since most of the kids in the new grade were around the same age as I was. (Because of my November birthday, as I mentioned in a previous comment, I missed the cutoff date for starting first grade at the Catholic grade school and had to go to public school for a year first, so skipping a grade just undid that bureaucratic mess.)
Re: Sleepovers
Date: Jan. 23rd, 2008 04:43 pm (UTC)The only time I ever skipped a grade was in Hebrew school; I started late, in 5th grade, after the kids had already learned the alphabet and were doing the first half of the prayers. In 5th grade I took the 4th grade alphabet class, and the next I skipped up to the 6th grade with everybody else, since I had to be at the right level to prepare for bar/bat mitzvahs in 7th grade. So at first I was lost, but by the mid/end of the year I'd caught up and pushed ahead. Those classes weren't exactly challenging, nor the students motivated for the most part....
Re: Sleepovers
Date: Jan. 23rd, 2008 05:06 pm (UTC)Re: Sleepovers
Date: Jan. 23rd, 2008 05:08 pm (UTC)