1981

This was a big year for me. I was in a class play. My reign as a klepto was officially over. I still had no boobs. I was turned down to be a cheerleader. I read my first young adult romance. I finally got a backbone. I was a double dutching jump roper until a girl with man feet jumped on my foot and sprang it. And like that, my career was over. My little sister was born. I could go on, but as you can see this year holds a lot of meaning to me. At least the stuff I remember.

BTW the TV pic I used? We seriously had this giant monstrosity in our home! Memories.

I was ten years old and in the fifth grade. It was in a shared class between two teachers. Yes I still remember their names. That is how much an impression this class made on me. Mrs Crittendon in the mornings, and Mr. Hamaguchi in the afternoons. Mostly what I remember from the classes is all the fun stuff, which we seemed to do a lot of! This is where Mrs. Crittendon took my love of Judy Blume further by having us act out passages from the books “Tales of the 4th grade nothing” and “Super Fudge.”

We also did mini readings from Shel Silverstein’s poetry. I swear I can still remember my ten year old self reciting the poem in which I can’t remember the name, but this bit of passage “If I eat one more piece of pie, I’ll die. If I don’t eat another piece of pie I’ll die.”

The big play we did in that class for the whole school (which I forgot to mention above, we did all of these mini plays/recitals in front of the whole school) though was Jungle Book. I will tell you this; my part was for one of the elephants. At first. The teacher saw how much energy I had, like way too much, and she switched me with a boy who was perfect for the slow moving elephants. I in turn became one of monkeys in King Louie camp. My god how do I still remember this?

We were so good; we also put on the play for the parents. We also did the whole play in fluorescent colors/lights. Pretty ingenious if you ask me. The lights were placed around the stage on the floor and all the scenery and us kids were painted with florescent paint. To make my part of the monkey come alive to the audience a cut out painted monkey head was taped to my chest. Seriously looked like monkeys dancing.

I also had my first slow dance in this class. It was not like junior high or high school where the dances were held in the gym or auditorium. This was just for the class. Well I remember the song, It was Stacy Lattisaw and the song was “Love on a two way street”.

I also learned how to line dance and what “dosy-doh your partner” meant. This is when I first found out that there was really a school like in the movie “Fame”. They were called Main Attraction (which at the time I did not realize you had to audition for!!) and they performed for us kids, basically recruiting for the School of Creative and Performing Arts. I was in and after their performance I begged my mom like for the rest of the 5th grade year to let me please go to the school.

I can go on and on, but this year was a good year, and after remembering it, it makes sense that this is the beginning of my love affair with books, and the need to perform. Thank you Mrs. Crittendon and Mr. Hamaguchi!