I remember a lot of odd things from when I was a kid of 5 or 6. That’s where things seem to creep into my brain as actual memories rather than things that I could be deluding myself into remembering. Where you have been told the story by your grandmother so many times while looking through the photo album that you are CERTAIN that you remember the event in the photo.

Mosty I remember the bad things; a creepy nightmare featuring giant mushrooms and falling into a bottomless pit forever (age ~7). I remember beating a kid up when he sprayed me with a hose, and I remember screaming at Michael Tayles over whose turn at bat it was. I was next up and really really wanted to go… I struck out as per usual.

Anger and embarrassment aren’t an uncommon pairing in my life.

I remember walking into kindergarten, announcing proudly that I had turned 5! I was a bit disgusted that nobody was impressed; with the exception of one or two kids, everyone else had been 5 for months already. When you’re 60 months old, the kid who is 66 months old has had so much more time to play GI Joes that it simply isn’t fair.

The only other things I remember about kindergarten involve chicken poop, the raised sandbox, and the test on the alphabet. I don’t recall being especially pleased at the prospect of testing.

First grade did not get off to a good start. I had gone to an orientation and was quite certain that I had committed the place to memory. I was going to be so cool this year, going to the big kids school, but I managed to start off day one bawling.

Elizabeth Seton was the Catholic School Board’s big experiment in open concept schooling. The classrooms didn’t have doors, instead having open shelves in place of the fouth wall or a large opening in the cement brick wall. Most classes opened directly to a small, central library, and the openness lent well to kids being noisy. Apparently the open concept idea went away soon after we left, when they had to start packing more kids in than the open concept could really deal with.

I was dropped at the front to begin my school career, and I didn’t need help from anyone. I was going to be teaching the class by the end of the day. I walked in the front doors, past the office, and opened the door to my class without hesitation. Actually, it was the door to the janitor’s supply closet; I had no idea where I was. I panicked. The halls were dark and most of the rooms were empty; I believe that we were the first class in the school for a little while; I don’t recall an older class being around during the first year, partly due to construction still going on in parts of the building.

It seems that we came in the side door for the orientation, and not the front door. That little change didn’t strike my young brain as significant, and instead I end up confused, lost, and crying in frustration on my first day. I’ve always been a big winner at making first impressions… Someone; the principal or a teacher or someone else lead me to the right place, 20 meters away, in plain sight.

Perry Batke was the paste eater who reminded me or Fozzie Bear, Brent Macauley was the kid with coke bottle glasses who was obsessed with the ‘Coo Coo for cocoa puffs’ line from the commercial, Joel Carlos the Philipino kid with the big house, Kelly Connolly was the JFK obsessed kid who affected a Massachusetts accent though he was born locally. There was a Stephanie Dubitz (?) who was the primary target for much abuse and jokes; weird last name can be enough, I suppose, but I believe she may also have been the girl with breasts in elementary. Different is bad, after all.

I remember an eclipse happening during class one day (grade 3?) and the teacher pretended nothing was happening. What a shame that science was hardly touched on in elementary; I was so happy to get that science textbook from my uncle that had experiments and descriptions of the world. Between that and my dad’s logic workbook from his electronics classes at SAIT I was able to keep from being too bored in elementary and junior high.

In junior high I had accidentally been placed into Drama as an option, rather than art or french. In the first class we were instructed to lay on the floor and visualize…. a couple of us couldn’t get out of there fast enough at that point. I didn’t think much about drama until college, when I was the only non-drama major to audition for a show that year. I still think that I should have tried more than the once…

In grades 7 through 9 we did all our math in a series of soft cover work books. I believe that each year we had two of these books, each intended to be used for half of the school year. Since lessons and examples were provided, it was possible to keep going at the end of class. A couple of us (Norman Hoffman, Eddie Shields, and perhaps David Vallee?) took this as something of a challenge. Our math teacher encouraged us, allowing us to set our pace independent of the class, and answering our questions separately. Each year we completed the books around the half way point, more or less. I never did learn my multiplication tables, but was still blasting through math using a variety of tricks such as doubling numbers repeatedly (6×8 being 6 .. 12 .. 24 .. 48 .. I still do this).