I remember at 9

9 November 2011, 6:21 pm by Giggles
Categories: Education, Remembers

I remember moving to New Mexico just before my ninth birthday. Until we found a house we lived in an apartment that made me wary of apartments for years. I remember my mom did a lot to make sure that birthday was a special one though.

I memorized all three verses of “I am a Child of God” while waiting for the bus the month of school we lived in that apartment before moving into our house. The school I went to for that month was a closed school and I was used to open schools. It felt very confined. My teacher that month was Mr. Near (or was it Far?). After we bought our house (where I got my own room and we had orange shag carpet in part of the house, green shag in another part, and carpet in the kitchen), I went to Chaparral Elementary and my teacher was Mrs. Stupin. A student was assigned to help show me around but she didn’t do a very good job. A kid named Michael Rains in my class did a better job and he and I became good friends all through elementary school.

The school gave me some tests and started pulling me out for Enrichment during the week. The Enrichment teacher was weird. She had us put on a production of “Midsummer’s Night Dream” and I don’t like that play to this day. They also started sending me to Mrs. Armendariz’ classroom in the for math.

I started playing the flute that year. I played through my sophomore year of high school. I still have the sign my parents made to wish me luck the night of our first concert.

I remember playing Oregon Trail on the green screened Apple IIe in our classroom. When I taught school it was really fun for me to watch my students play the latest version of it. The same things in the game were still fun for the next generation.

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I remember at 8

8 November 2011, 7:57 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Health, Remembers

I remember Trapper Keepers in 3rd grade and how cool they were. I really wanted one. Fortunately I was a very messy student and my mom came to school with me one morning so she could help me clean my desk (I kept losing assignments) and got me a Trapper Keeper so I could stay organized. I didn’t think mom coming was that cool at the time.

I was also easily distracted in school, especially during spelling (I hated spelling) so my mom sent me to school with a kitchen timer and I had to finish the assignment before the timer went off. I didn’t think that was that cool either.

That year the school decided to group all the students in 3rd and 4th grade by math ability rather than age. That was a lot of fun for me and I did great at it.

I had to stay in for recess a lot to finish my English assignments. I couldn’t underline verbs and circle subjects or whatever it was fast enough. So I figured I wasn’t any good at English and it wasn’t until my last two years of high school that my attitude about that started to change.

We did a Christmas program that year called “Christmas Around the World” and we had to learn songs in many different languages. I remember we had to learn “Joy to the World” in Japanese I think. I do know that we learned “O Christmas Tree” in German (O Tannenbaum), and I can still sing it in German (or at least the German I understood in 3rd grade), better than I can in English even. Which is interesting because that was the song I was selected to dance to so I didn’t even sing it. My partner had the most chapped lips I’ve ever seen – as far around his lips as his tongue would reach.

I got the chicken pox that year. They went around the neighborhood. My friend Julie and her brother had them at Christmas. We got them during the spring. My brother got them first. My sister got one on her nose so my mom checked me and I had one in the middle of my chest. My teacher came to my house to give me the standardized tests since I was missing them at school.

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I remember at 7

7 November 2011, 7:39 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Family, Remembers

I remember going to Yellowstone National Park for a family reunion. We stayed in some of the cabins and were playing baseball in the parking lot till a buffalo decided to walk through our game and we all hid behind the cars.

They’d set up radios between the bigger vans so as we drove around we could keep in contact. My mom got on the radio at one point and started giving a “tour” pointing out that on your left you’d see a large tree and on your right were several rocks.

We saw several geysers and wild animals, more than just the buffalo that wanted to play baseball.

It was either first or second grade (which means either I was 6 or 7) when I remember a teacher sitting a trouble student next to me for the first time. It became a regular occurrence and by sixth grade I’d realized I could use that to my advantage and do things and the teacher, who would be expecting it from the boy next to me, would blame him. He was one of a twin and I remember he had a bald spot on the side of his head where his brother had yanked his hair out.

It was also that year that I cheated on a spelling test. The teachers went through a lot of effort to cover the spelling words that might be on posters or bulletin boards in the classroom. But that week one of the words was “pencil” and during the test I realized that that word was actually on my pencil so I copied it from there. :pencil:

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I remember at 6

6 November 2011, 6:15 pm by Giggles
Categories: Family, Remembers

I remember driving to Wyoming to visit Grandpa Giles.

We’d stop at Little America and get ice cream cones to break up the trip. When I took my big road trip in 2004 I stopped and got an ice cream cone for old time’s sake. It still looked just like I remembered it.

Grandpa’s house had fun toys in the basement to play with. Grandpa would sit in his chair and say he was going to study his eyelids. It took me a while to figure out that meant it was nap time.

Grandpa Nelson lived in Utah and we spent a lot of time at his house.

He had huge lilac bushes in the back yard and a big garden, grape vines, and a clothes line I’m envious of now because of how big it was. There was even a ringer washer in the basement. And a huge braided rug on the floor down there.

We’d eat ice cream with peaches and have strawberry-rhubarb stuff (pies and jams). He had African violets in the front window and lots of magnet toys in the side room.

Grandpa Nelson liked to fish and my brother and I got fishing poles one year so he could take us. He’d let us get a candy afterwards and I still think of fishing with Grandpa when I get Nerds.

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I remember at 5

5 November 2011, 8:08 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Health, Remembers

I remember it was about the time I started kindergarten that I finally stopped sucking my thumb.

I remember my parents painting my thumb with icky tasting stuff to get me to stop. I remember being promised a Strawberry Shortcake doll house if I stopped (I had a Strawberry Shortcake quilt on my bed at one point). I remember hiding in my parents walk-in closet and sneaking my thumb sucking so they wouldn’t know I was still doing it and I could get that doll house (I was a closet sucker). I remember a man in the neighborhood who really annoyed me and I did not like him because he always thought he was being so clever and asking me if my thumb tasted good and if he could have a taste. He was stupid.

And then about the time I started school I just stopped and never really thought about it again. And I never needed braces either.

I still remember my kindergarten teacher explaining to someone that the other student must really like what they had done if they were copying them. Copying in kindergarten was considered a compliment. I’ve told a few students that myself from time to time (while also telling the copier that I want to see what they can do on their own and what their ideas are).

I had my tonsils taken out that year too. I remember being in the bathroom with my mom and the lights were off and she used a flashlight to look at my tonsils and then she had to show dad when he got home.

We took a tour of the hospital and I got to see the waiting room and the operating room and the recovery room so that I wouldn’t be scared when I woke up.

We stopped at Grandpa’s house on the way to the hospital and Grandpa and Dad gave me a blessing.

I got to do some crafts while we waited. The nurse who took my blood told me that some people have green blood right as she stuck me and I remember that being the first time I hadn’t cried at being stuck with a needle (you should see me now!). They asked me what flavor of gas I wanted and I said bubble gum because gum was a big treat in our house. We didn’t get it often, only for road trips really.

And then I was waking up and there was a teenager across the recovery room from me that was throwing up a lot and I wanted a popsicle. I got to stay home from school and eat popsicles and color in work books. It was fun.

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I remember at 4

4 November 2011, 9:54 am by Giggles
Categories: Family, Remembers

I remember picking out a stuffed dog for my sister when she was born and a doll for me. The dog smelled like baby powder. That was at Lionel Playworld, the best store ever for a kid that age. I remember her crib (or maybe it was the changing table) being at the foot of our bunk beds until we moved to the new house. I had the top bunk so I’d sit up there and watch my mom take care of her.

The new house was a split level. Walking into the front door put you at the middle level with the living room and kitchen. To clean the kitchen floor Mom would dump soapy water on it and then we used netting scrubs as “ice skates” and would skate around the floor scrubbing up all the marks. Then she’d pull out big towels and we’d get down on all fours and “bunny hop” around to soak up the water.

You went up half a flight on the left to the three bedrooms and bathroom. My sister and I shared a room. I remember everyone trying to demonstrate to her how to crawl up and down the stairs when she started crawling.

You went down half a flight to the family room and moderately unfinished laundry room (I remember the fire in that room, but that’s not for a few more years). Down another half from there put you in the unfinished basement. Dad helped my brother and I build a Noah’s Ark for my sister for Christmas one year. Or maybe it was us helping him. Mom made the stuffed animals for it.

Most of the dreams I have that are located at “home” are located at that house. It was in a circle so the backyard was huge. When I picture yards or gardens in my mind while I’m reading I picture that yard.

I remember the flood waters filling the streets of Salt Lake City.

I remember putting the Christmas music box on the shelf over the stairs down to the lower level. I don’t know if I necessarily remember the first time we did that, but I remember doing it and I was 4 when we started.

I remember being on the side of the road after the car accident and Grandpa coming to pick us up. I remember trying to get everything packed the night before for our trip. I remember sitting on our parents bed while they read to us that night. I remember playing with a wind-up cat at Grandpa’s house later and thinking it flipping over was just like the car.

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I remember at 3

3 November 2011, 7:39 am by Giggles
Categories: Education, Exercise, Family

I remember we lived in a yellow house with pansies and a sand box and snowball bushes along the back wall and the train would go behind our house. Dad would put snowball flowers in my hair for church. When we moved shortly after I turned four I remember two ladies who came to look at the house talking about getting rid of the sandbox. I didn’t want them to have our house. We had pansies and snowballs at our wedding because of my memory of that house.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with my Dad while he worked on his Masters.

I remember painting the house and wearing my pink overalls with all the pockets, my pocket pants, while I helped.

I remember hearing what sounded like a pan falling off the counter in the kitchen and Dad getting up and getting rid of a mouse that had ended up in the trap.

I remember bunk beds and getting up in the middle of the night one night, all done sleeping, and wanting to play and getting my brother up and playing with the Fisher Price farm (it moos when you open the barn doors, kind of hard to play with it silently, not that I would’ve thought of that at 3) and my parents finally deciding we were up and fixing breakfast in the middle of the night and I was wondering where the sun was because we were up so the sun should be too.

I remember wanting a cat (I didn’t know I was allergic to them) and so I decided that the purple monkey I got for Christmas would be my cat. His name is Purple Kitty. For a while I think he was a girl because we had matching dresses. But he’s a boy. I even took him to a dance as my date in college, but that didn’t happen when I was 3 so you’ll have to wait for that story (and apparently it concerned my dad).

I remember running my very first race with my dad. A radio person asked me how fast I was going to run and I said, “Fast.” And we went to Grandpa Nelson’s house after the race. Mom was cheering for me the whole race which means she must have run the whole race from the sidelines.

I remember cows. But I don’t remember much more about that. :moo:

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