Getting an Education

I grew up living in the country, three miles or more from town, where there were no kindergartens. You just started first grade and finally graduated from the grade twelve.

I was fortunate that I had an aunt who was a school teacher. The summer before I started first grade I went to her house for what you might call kindergarten. I learned my ABCs, counting, how to write some words and I discovered Cheerios, my first boxed cereal!!

I got to start school in town where all the rich kids went! My aunt drove me there. I was bored to death. Due to my 'kindergarten' training that year I was way ahead of the other kids... so I was 'promoted' to the second grade. Wrong move. I might could count and recite my letters but I surely wasn't ready for that more advanced stuff...

I sort of didn't fit in elementary school. I was quiet, a loner you might say. I'd grown up alone so what do you expect. No playmates near by, in a household of adults. I didn't know how to be a kid. Then came junior high. That was big business to me. The math, which I struggled with, got really hard. I didn't like sports so a friend and I sat under a tree and made chains out of clover blossoms while the other girls played volley ball. Talk about being different!! Here are a couple pictures of my junior high.

Boy, I bet I walked through that door a kazillion times.

Then it was time to go to high school.

I rode the bus to that school and there were a LOT of students everywhere, up and down the stairs, filling the hall. I got lost in the shuffle.  I joined the band. Played trombone. I failed in Algebra. Wrote letters to my honey during class (he was in the Navy) and got caught doing it.

Then I took biology. All the first semester they kept talking about dissecting a frog after Christmas. Not me. I always laughingly said that Elbert came along and rescued me from that disgusting chore. We got married in December of that year and I moved away. A gal's gotta do what a gal's gotta do... (grin)