bugsii

I worked like a maniac today on my exams today.  I wrote until I thought I might die (15 pages!), but I had something to look forward to, which was nice.  Dan found out about another free screening for a movie.  This one was The Kids Are All Right and it was really good, well acted and even made me cry at the end (which rarely happens).  In addition to all that, it had the added benefit of making me want to own a house again, buy a beat up old truck, and write a screenplay.  But, that will have to wait.  What made me cry at the end was when the family drops their daughter off at college and says goodbye.  I remember that…

Beth and I had been looking at colleges since we were at least 15.  We searched college catalogs as a hobby.  We trashed Canton every chance we got.  We couldn’t wait to leave, to go somewhere great, to start our own lives.  Where would it be?  California, Washington, DC, New York?  We had so much fun imagining how our lives would change, living in an amazing place and starting college where we would make new friends and major in something fantastic.  We were ready.  We were more ready than any two girls could be.  Beth decided first on American University in Washington and I made up my mind a little later.  It was so great to dream all summer and then finally pack up our rooms and load up the cars together to head to our new lives… a 6 hour drive, my dad and me in his purple lumina and Beth with her parents in my Aunt Mary’s borrowed van.  We arrived, we walked around, we unloaded, and then we went to the quad to say goodbye.  There we were hugging our parents one more time before they headed back home without us, but it wasn’t until they got in those empty cars and pulled away that we looked at each other with tears in our eyes.  This was it.  The moment when we got our freedom, but also the moment I realized that I didn’t live with my family anymore and that I would be sleeping in a new and unfamiliar place that night. I didn’t expect to feel that feeling.

The tears didn’t last too long though and before we knew it, we were getting around like pros and loving the life of a college student.  But there are lots of times that I still long for life just before that moment.  I think we all do.  When we had only minor responsibilities, when we were taken care of, where we were allowed to be kids and where we just fit.  You really don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.

Yesterday was a lot of school work with a tiny break for my Ed Tech group meeting.  In the evening, Dan went to Gameworks with Ben, Matt, and Jim (Matt’s Dad), where he apparently won 36 matches in a row at Street Fighter.  Word on the street is that he trained in Japan.  Someone told him, “It’s been an honor.”  Oh, I can’t stop laughing.  I married the best geek ever!

Anyway, while Dan was on his streak, I was reading a book for my Politics of Curriculum class and in the book, the author mentioned DH Lawrence, and for some bizarre reason I remembered that at some point, I had bought a collection of his works, and at that moment, I also thought, “Maybe I should read them!”  (in my spare time, right?).  So, I went to the bookshelf to grab the fat text and in the first few pages was a bookmark I haven’t seen for about ten years.  In fact, I don’t think I remembered it existed until just then.  On one side was a note from my Honors Pre-Calc/Agebra II teacher in high school:

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Dear Laurie,

You have been a pleasure to teach this year.  You are a Bright individual with such a happy and outgoing personality.  Thanks for adding much to the classroom.  I hope you have many good memories to take with you as you leave!  Best of Luck to you, Laurie!

Congratulations!
Mrs. Weil

Aside from the weird capitalization, I’m not going to lie, it made me cry a little.  I was such a crazy, carefree, immature, happy person in high school and I remember this class in particular.  I was usually decently good at math, so I didn’t study much for the first quiz.  When I got the quiz back, I got a C and I about DIED.  I was so nervous to have anything but an A.  So, from then on, I paid intense attention and participated like a maniac.  No kidding, I would flail my arm in the air to answer every question because I needed to understand.  Once I did “get it,” I had great fun trying to get a better score than our Italian exchange student who sat next to me and would taunt me with a 97% to my 96%.  He was learning in a second language, the punk!  We had a party at the end of the year and Mrs. Weil brought in party hats and snacks and I just loved it.  I loved that class, but I had no recollection of this bookmark, and it made me feel really good to find it.  Especially at a moment like this in my career as a student-plus.  Oftentimes I get so serious in class that I forget to laugh and enjoy it.  I get so worried about not appearing to know what I’m talking about that I can lose my sense of humor.  I need to lighten up.

On the other side of the bookmark is “A Student’s Prayer” (I went to Catholic school, in case you didn’t know):

I like the last stanza the best:

Let me always keep on learning,
Even when the class is done;
May I use my knowledge wisely,
So it works for everyone.

Okay, so I haven’t use Pre-Calc to help anyone, but Amen!

1989-1990

I posted this picture as my facebook profile picture the other day and I had no idea how many memories it would evoke.  When I first put it up, I just thought it was funny, me with my bangs and perm, but there was a lot going on when I was in fourth grade.

The first thing I can remember about that year was finding out who my teacher was.  Every year a few weeks before school started, class lists would be posted on the front doors of the school.  I loved the anticipation of the whole event.  No one ever knew the exact day, so when it came time, I would walk down to school every chance I got and check the front doors (we only lived a few blocks away).  That year I was a little hesitant though because I knew that I could get one of two teachers.  Miss Everhard, a new, young teacher with a blonde pixie haircut or Mrs. Ezzie, an older, rather large woman with sleek black hair, giant old-lady glasses and the nickname “Ezzie-bomb” because of her reputation for blowing up at students.  Nick had had her and he liked to taunt me with the fact that I could have Mrs. Ezzie this year.  So when I walked up to the school that summer, I was half excited, half afraid.  I checked for a few days and nothing had been posted.  Then, one sunny afternoon, Nick came zipping home on his bike excited, big smile on his face, “The class lists are up!  Laurie has Mrs. Ezzie!!!”  My heart sank, I started crying (I was nine) and entered deep denial.  I wouldn’t believe him until I went to see it for myself.  So, I stomped down to school only to confirm that Nick was right and my fourth grade life was over.  I imagined a year of walking in a perfectly straight line and sitting up in my desk afraid to breathe or drop a pencil.  My mom reassured me that Mrs. Ezzie would be fine, but I didn’t believe her.

I remember nothing about the first day of fourth grade, but I do remember getting along famously with Mrs. Ezzie.  She seemed to think I was pretty funny and once even told me that if I was a dog I would be a St. Bernard.  I’m not sure exactly what she meant by that, but it sounded like a compliment at the time.  Once I forgot my homework (which was out of the ordinary) and I bravely told her as tears welled up in my eyes, expecting my first detention, and she just let me off the hook, just a, “Don’t do it again.”  She wasn’t so bad.

I was also pretty cool in fourth grade.  It helped that I had a sister in high school to style me.  As you can see in the picture, I had a perm, amazingly perfect bangs, double pierced ears and a killer hand me down outfit that included a sweater vest five sizes too big.  I even went to the New Kids concert that year, on a school night!  And when a new cute boy came to school mid-year (he had a rat tail!), guess who was his girlfriend?  That’s right.  He dumped me later for a sixth grader, but still, I was his first choice.  Fourth grade is also the first year at St. Joe’s that you can get on the honor roll and I was on it all four quarters.  Yeah, fourth grade was a pretty good year.

Except, not really at home.  At home, it was kind of a disaster.  See, my parents split when I was in second grade and my three siblings and I were living with my mom.  My mom was a waitress and really struggled to pay the bills.  That was the year things started breaking on our mini-van.  The mini-van that my dad and mom bought together brand new, the mini-van all the girl scouts fought to ride in, the mini-van we first drove to Florida in.  Things started breaking and we couldn’t fix them and eventually someone showed up at the door and took it away.  We got an old impala after that.  The cloth on the inside of the roof sagged and the girl scouts did not fight to ride in it.  At the end of the year we were evicted from our home a few blocks from school and had to move into a not-so-great neighborhood much further away.  Far enough away that the next year, I couldn’t walk to see who my teacher would be.  I just had to wait.