On Looking Young

I realize that there are many of you who do not want to hear me complain about this topic, so for you, I suggest you go here instead and look at these cute pictures of animals.

If you're still here, I have a new story for the Sarah Looks Freakishly Young file. Today I went with Rob to an art gallery reception for one of his retired former colleagues. After we went around and looked at all the paintings, we went up to the former colleague and congratulated him on his show. He greeted Rob. Then he turned to me and said something like "And who's this young lady?"

I immediately assumed that he had mistaken me for a student. Hey, that happens sometimes if I go to a college campus. And the man in question is older. Fine.

Little did I know it was actually much worse.

At this point, Rob introduced me and said "Have you met my wife Sarah?" There was some handshaking and greeting and then the former colleague said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but you look like a junior high girl."He then went on to say I looked young enough to be Rob's daughter, which is verging on the ridiculous.

When people say stuff like that, I find myself wishing I routinely carried around a selection of photos of myself at various ages so I could have them compare how I ACTUALLY LOOKED in junior high with how I look now. So, for your amusement, I offer this photo of myself from the University Heights Middle School 8th grade class of '89 yearbook (right).

See? I have, in fact, aged considerably since then. Well, maybe not considerably. But I'm a couple of inches taller. And at least 30 pounds heavier. I do still own a jean jacket, but now it's delightfully retro. (At least, that's what I tell myself.) I think I'm probably just as much of a nerd, if not more so. In fact, in 8th grade I was on the drill team, which I thought made me way cool. Oh, it's picture time again! Bottom row, 3rd from the right!

Yeah, I was probably cooler back then.

Laurel Snyder: On Divorce, and Her Novel BIGGER THAN A BREAD BOX

Although this post is related to the world of kidlit, I'm putting it here because this is where I usually post Stories About Me, and other things that aren't related directly to my work as a writer or my reviews of books. I suppose these days there's a lot of overlap, so I'm going to cross-post a link to Finding Wonderland in any case. But here's the deal: Laurel Snyder's latest book, Bigger than a Bread Box,

is about divorce/separation. It’s also about a magical vintage bread box that grants wishes, and about a kid adjusting to life in a new school, and about poetry and snack cakes. But most of all, it’s about parents who are having trouble with each other and their daughter trying to make sense of that.

So Laurel is asking us, out here in the virtual world, to share our own stories, our thoughts or impressions or memories, of divorce. She's issued what I think is a very worthwhile challenge:

When I told some people I was going to try this, the response (with the exception of a few voices) was NO! People said it would be too negative. But I have to believe there are people like me, who want to share these memories, these thoughts. That our grownup selves haven’t entirely overwhelmed our childhood memories… Prove me right?

I think what I want to share about my parents' divorce when I was eight is the solace that reading provided for me, because we are, after all, on the topic of books, too. Although the divorce was, overall, a good thing, it was often disruptive and difficult for me to cope with the custody situation, the visitation arrangements, being HERE when I wanted to be THERE, or going THERE when I wanted to be HERE. My relationship with the monolithic entity I previously knew as My Parents, as Mom 'n' Dad, had turned into two separate relationships, with two separate and very different people.

So I think that my desire to be, not HERE, but THERE, was subsumed into reading voraciously for escape, since I was the one party without any control over the situation. Oh, sure, there were drama and tantrums galore on my part, but beyond that, I would often escape into the nearest book. More than that, I'd escape into the same books over and over, books that seem to me now to be achingly symbolic of my desire to physically escape. James and the Giant Peach was one title that got a lot of action. I'd daydream about being James, about hitching a ride inside a gigantic peach and then sailing the seas and soaring the skies with my giant, scary-on-the-outside but lovely-on-the-inside insect friends. A few years later, I'd read and reread Madeleine L'Engle, especially A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and travel through time with Charles on his unicorn on a journey to save the world. Charles had power, and he had the most intense of family bonds to support him on his quest.

I wanted to say something profound here, maybe something about how these books didn't just help me to escape, they helped me to return. But it would be disingenuous, it would be too pretty, too convenient. So I'll just say this: when I was finally old enough to go away to college and start my own life, it felt a little like I was finally James escaping on my own giant peach. And starting on my own adventure was everything I hoped it would be when I was just that pensive eight-year-old with my nose buried in a book. In a way, those books saved me. Words are still saving me. And, though I haven't yet had a chance to read Bigger than a Bread Box, I know that it, too, has that power.

Kudos to Laurel Snyder for tackling the topic, and for inviting us to share our stories.

Embarrassing Things I Wrote in the Past

Yeah, I wrote a lot of things in the past that I find embarrassing now. It's just the way things work. But today's is quite special--after Tanita posted her college-era letter to her future self over on Finding Wonderland, I remembered an essay (yes, ESSAY) that I wrote, completely of my own volition, at age 13 (it's dated June 20, 1990), differentiating the types of people who annoyed me. Evidently the old joke is true: there are two types of people, those who divide people into types and those who don't. Ha ha. Clearly my 13-year-old self was obsessed with dividing people into types. Or I was really mad at someone. Anyway, here it is for your reading amusement. Let me just note, for the record, three things: 1) I was REALLY CRANKY when I was 13, and 2) I'm glad I never have to be 13 again, and 3) I am really not this person anymore. Um, I don't think. Then again, I did draw all those Common Species of the Literary World Cartoons...

---

INSIGHTS - DIFFERENCES (by Sarah, June 20, 1990)

There are many different types of people in the world. Those, like me, who choose to have friends may have certain standards that these friends must live up to, certain characteristics of their personalities. 

One main thing about people is that they may change. As friends mature, their personalities and viewpoints can drastically be altered. It is then when one sees more readily certain types of people.

One of the most common types is the fakers. People who pretend to be someone they aren't. There are some identifying attributes to these people's outside personalities. For one, you often see them "kissing up" to people in prominent places. Don't get this confused with the harmless type of kissing up, as with being truly kind to people, or being indifferent to people one doesn't like. [Editor's Note: I was obviously unclear on the concept of kissing up...]

--NOTE: I am not classifying people in a false way because, from experience, I tell you this is true-- [I find this side note HYSTERICAL.]

About that Fasting Thing...

Especially if we've known each other since my childhood, you'll know that me deciding to observe even one single day of Ramadan is a highly unusual occurrence. You'll probably remember that I did not always get along well with my dad while I was growing up. I fasted a few times (not really by choice) when I was nine or ten, and was frustrated by the fact that I didn't have much say in the matter.

I was also confused about it. When I was small, when my parents were still married, neither was particularly religious. Oh, we observed holidays from two sets of religions, and pork was not a part of our diet, but that was about the extent of it. I have clear memories of me, my mom AND my dad gathered around the piano, singing while my mom played Christmas carols, just as I have clear memories of my mom exasperated at the insane amounts of traditionally butchered halal goat stored in our freezer after the observance of Eid. Me? I liked extra holidays. I was a materialistic little 1980s child, and more holidays meant more presents. (Incidentally, my dad's not in the picture above...I assume he was the photographer. It's my aunt, uncle, cousins, mom and grandfather.)

So when my father remarried—I was about nine—and started to become a more observant Muslim, that change reached into my life as well—when it was his visitation weekend, I went (reluctantly) to Sunday school and mosque. And on a couple of occasions, yes, I did observe the fast. But as soon as I was old enough to really assert my opinion, I refused to do it any more. I stopped going to Islamic Sunday school, avoided going to mosque as much as possible. By the time I was twelve, I was able to choose when I wanted to visit my dad, and although the frequency of visits didn't decrease by much, I was able to avoid having religion forced on me by anyone.

I'm still not a religious person. Neither is Rob. I generally feel like it's one of those cocktail party, polite company no-no subjects, along with politics. As for tomorrow's fast, we're not doing it for religious reasons. I'm not doing it to make my dad happy, although he is pleased we're making this small attempt. (I'm not sure how pleased he would be at our less-than-strict implementation. We're not going to adhere to the letter of every rule. More on that tomorrow.)

Why ARE we doing it? I guess it's complicated. I'm not doing it to connect with my dad, though it might help me do that a little. If I'm being honest, it has very little to do with that. What got me thinking about it was actually Rob's cousin Patrick. Patrick posted a Facebook update about how he's fasted a few times in the past to express support, kinship and solidarity with Muslim friends. And seeing him say that was very freeing for me. I had this realization that I don't need to let my own conflicted feelings about my relationship with my dad get in the way of me making a connection with my heritage, even if it's a tiny one, just for one day.

And I've felt really strongly about that heritage lately, with Muslims apparently being personae non grata in certain circles and Islam being denounced left and right. Like in the days after 9/11, yet again I'm afraid for my Muslim family members here in the U.S. I may not observe Islam, but I don't want anything to happen to my family and I want them to be able to practice their faith with dignity and respect. There's so much misunderstanding and disinformation circulating right now, which I suspect stems primarily from the fact that a lot of people don't KNOW, or haven't bothered to get to know, any actual practicing Muslims.

I'm not going to go off on a rant about that, though it would be easy to do. I'm just going to conclude by saying that this is going to be a very interesting experience for both Rob and myself. I'm hoping that it reminds me a little of where I come from, connects me with that a little more, even if my usual M.O. is to forge my own path, something that isn't likely to change. And maybe others will be encouraged by what I've decided to do—or at least take my words to heart—and open themselves up to their Muslim friends and neighbors a little more. I'm going to sound like a hippie here, but mutual understanding means we as Americans truly can be a "we" as opposed to an "us" and a "them."

Dubious Advice from My Teenage Self

A few days ago my mother e-mailed me a scanned copy of the salutatorian speech I wrote and delivered at my high school graduation. My grandfather had kept a copy (that's his handwriting in the upper right) and my mom recently unearthed it, apparently. Note the top-quality dot-matrix printing, ha ha.

Reading it, I was shocked by how similar my writing voice was to its current incarnation—despite the fact that, at the time, becoming a writer was not even on my radar. I enjoyed writing, and I always have, but as you probably know, until about ten years ago I fully intended to devote my career to some form of visual art.

The other thing that struck me on reading my sixteen-year-old self's words was the fact that I still seem to be struggling with some of the same writing-related issues 17 years later. Despite a few specific details, the speech is almost painfully generic. And even now, I feel like one of my weaknesses as a writer is tendency to fall back on cliché and genericness.

But there are a few things I love about it, too. I love the fact that I inserted a pause specifically in order to "look cosmic." I love the fact that I pretended I was tearing up a fictitious "bad" speech I'd allegedly written in favor of delivering these, er, nuggets of wisdom—a rather theatrical segment which I had to argue for keeping, and was only allowed to perform on condition that I word it carefully so as not to appear controversial (cf. the "this is the speech I could have written" part). I also love the fact that my dad took a picture* of that moment and captioned it with a post-it note ("now you are tearing your speech!").

In some ways, I hardly know what to think about it. Part of me can't help noticing what a risk-avoider I was, in the sense that I could easily have performed my speech with my originally intended wording on the day of graduation with little or no repercussion. But then, in some ways giving a speech at all is a risk of sorts. So I guess it evens out.

*Could not find the picture despite repeated searching. I know it exists, because I remember seeing it in a box a few years ago. Which box? Who knows?

The Zeroes in Prose, Part II

I promised youse the rest of my noughties, and here they are in all their prosaic glory. (God, I enjoyed writing that sentence.)

2005
My nephew Miles was born. I started sending out proposals for the novel I'd started writing as part of my graduate thesis. More of my friends started blogging, and I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for jobs on Craigslist, if my blog entries from that year are to be believed. I also started co-blogging with Tanita on what is now Finding Wonderland.

During the year, I tried to juggle temping with getting my own freelance business going. Meanwhile, Rob was awarded tenure at the end of the spring semester. I went to his summer color & design class for fun and a refresher, and also took a mixed media painting class. In the fall, Rob turned thirty. I established contact with my half-sister in Australia—or rather, she found me in the process of looking for her dad, that is, our dad. I participated in National Novel Writing Month for the first time. I got a lot of rejection letters, but on the more encouraging side, I got third place in a short story contest. I also was elected vice-president of the Cymdeithas Madog Board.

2006
Nice new kitchen linoleum was the latest step in our house renovation saga. I started some early forays into the heady world of being paid for my article writing, though I still had to juggle the writing with temping. I also got runner-up in another short story contest, started some (paid) freelance research work and became (unpaid) graphic designer for a local small theater.

Early in the year, I found myself in the awkward position of having to take over a bit earlier than anticipated as Board President. At the same time, I was the main local organizer for bringing a 75-person Welsh course to California in the summer. Unsurprisingly, I started getting hives again due to stress of epic proportions, which only ended after the course did.

In May, we took a trip to China with Rob's uncle and aunt. We got Tivo and celebrated our five-year wedding anniversary (not necessarily in that order). I met some Irish friends when I joined an online Flickr fiction writing group. In the fall, I joined a gym for my physical health and I started seeing Dr. Yoda (not his real name) for my mental health. I participated in the Cybils for the first time, and during National Novel Writing Month, I started writing The Latte Rebellion. I got to be on a local NPR program and talk about it, which was super cool—my first (and only, so far) radio appearance.

2007
I got Adobe Creative Suite. (Yes, this was a major event.) We went to Hawaii's Big Island to visit friends there and enjoy the 70-degree "winter weather." I started cartooning again, for the writing blog this time. I turned thirty, and felt every single one of those years when I enrolled in an indoor soccer class. My second nephew, Avery, was born, and we attended our second summer Pig Roast (which we'd helped organize this time). We started getting our CSA vegetable box. I was a bridesmaid in two different weddings. We got our second cat, Zelda. I got busy with a lot more freelance work, which was gratifying, and did a lot more blogging. I continued as President of the Cymdeithas Madog Board, and then stepped down in the summer. I visited New York for the first time, and Venice, Italy. Our massive household construction project commenced.

2008
Kicked the new year off with a Mars Volta concert in San Francisco. My dad ditched his Quizno's franchise (an ill-advised get-rich-quick-in-semi-retirement scheme), de-stressed considerably, and started coming to terms with my career choice. I took a Spanish class. I started doing a bit more painting again, and then slacked off...again. I did some more freelance work—graphic design, mostly—and got some more writing rejections, as well as a few actual article acceptances. My younger cousin graduated from college, which made me feel old.

Our local soccer team, the San Jose Earthquakes, was reinstated, and we became what my sister would call "soccer tragics." In the summer, we went on a lot of rafting float trips with the boat we'd purchased the prior year. Our college friend Beth got married, and we went to Seattle to attend the wedding. I played Rock Band for the first time, and signed up for Twitter. We drank an inhuman amount of sake in celebration of Obama's presidential victory. The quality of my blog posts improved, though their number drastically decreased. My final blog post of the year said, "I don't want to make any unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky resolutions, like resolving that 2009 is the year that I'm going to land a literary agent and/or a book contract."

2009
I landed a book contract, no thanks to my pessimistic soul. Prior to that, though, I did a huge revision of my novel, followed by my query, tentative interest, and another huge revision. Rob started teaching figure drawing, and I went to his spring semester class so I could get some drawing practice. I also participated in a ten-artist collaborative print project, and wrote my first poem in years. I fought my way out of some major emotional doldrums (a regularly recurring battle for me). Reviewing my blog tells me that I formulated a lot of good intentions which I later forgot about.

I spent most of the summer working my butt off on the post-publisher-interest, pre-novel-acceptance revision—rekindling my confidence that perhaps I was indeed in the right line of work—and on a new freelance article writing job. Rob started his sabbatical for the 09-10 school year. We saw the King Tut exhibition, and saw our friend Jess for the first time in a couple of years. I got the novel acceptance and a contract, and waited on tenterhooks to find out what would happen next. Our transmission in the Honda busted, costing us over 4 grand before we left for Italy and Spain for a month. The Euro also kicked our asses. We came back and had a very modest holiday season, during which I wrote a few more poems.

...And then it was 2010.

Potentially embarrassing photo retrospective to come in a later post.

Interlude: Temp Jobs I Have Known

Any look at the previous decade of my life would not be complete without some small tribute to the many years I spent working as a temporary secretary. This list is by no means comprehensive. Some temp jobs I've had are too boring to relate; others are so forgettable I've, well, forgotten them. But here, in order of most recent (about a year and a half ago) to least recent (circa 1996), are a few gems.

•   Stanislaus County Office of Education (various jobs)
•   City of Modesto Wastewater Treatment Plant and Composting Facility (reorganized an entire file system that hadn't been touched since the 1980s)
•   Front office support at a school for problem students
•   Frito-Lay (didn't actually happen – I showed up and nobody knew who ordered the temp)
•   Stuffing envelopes with fliers advertising various strains of bull sperm for artificial insemination
•   St. Mary's College (Letters & Science Dean's Assistant – pretty posh gig)
•   Corporate Interior Services (bookkeeping assistant for office furniture supplier)
•   Roche Molecular Systems (severely underappreciated receptionist)
•   John Muir Health Network (helping draft medical group contracts)
•   Aetna U.S. Healthcare (stuffing and labeling envelopes)
•   Licensing Office, City of Westminster, London (mostly typing letters, scribbled by a boss with abominable handwriting and a tendency to call people "wretched peasants")
•   Phaidon Press, London (assistant to a high-strung woman, also with execrable handwriting, who was unable to keep a secretary for more than two weeks)

The Zeroes in Prose, Part I

Soon to be followed by the Zeroes in prose, part II, and the Zeroes in pictures. This was an interesting exercise--it's amazing how much you start to forget when you're constantly busy, moving on to the next thing and the next. I feel like I should do this more often, this documentation thing.

2000
I turned 23 years old. Also, Y2K happened and nothing imploded.

We were living in El Cerrito. Rob continued his harrowing grad school experience at the San Francisco Art Institute. I'd been working in San Francisco at IGN.com, mainly putting together e-mail newsletters about dudely topics like video/PC games, comics, wrestling, and so forth. This was the heyday of the internet boom; there was an IPO party, I got to attend E3, we were encouraged to play video games at work, and I produced immortal gems of quality writing such as this, while still being paid a rather unremarkable salary. It was a perfect distraction from the fact that I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life in the immediate term.

Then the internet bubble burst. In the summer, we took a trip to London, Bath, and the South of Wales. When I got back, there'd been layoffs. The company reorganized and I found myself in corporate marketing; instead of a cool nice-guy boss I suddenly had to report to Scary Bitch Woman; and the whole atmosphere changed. I wrote for the site in my spare time, but I realized I'd never be able to make it an official part of my job. But that got me thinking about writing...

2001
An eventful year. During the early part, I hung on at my job as Rob finished grad school. I enrolled in my first fiction writing class, an online workshop at UCLA Extension. I also started writing freelance articles about Welsh language for Suite 101. By March, I couldn't stand to be at my job anymore, and quit a few months earlier than I'd planned. I went back to temping. Then Rob completed his MFA in printmaking and applied to some teaching jobs. We both agreed that if he got a full-time job with benefits, it would be a good time to tie the knot, since I was now without any health insurance. (Yeah, I know, we're incurable romantics...ha.)

One day that summer, when I was working a temp job at St. Mary's College, I got a phone call from Rob. "Will you marry me?" he said. "YOU GOT THE JOB!" I squealed. We got married (some might say "eloped") with one witness at the Marin County Civic Center, a Frank Lloyd Wright building where the movie Gattaca was filmed. Soon after, we moved to Modesto, and Rob started teaching at Modesto Junior College that fall. I did some more temping, and enrolled in another writing class and a lit theory class at Cal State Hayward with the intention of preparing for grad school in creative writing.

The morning of 9/11, we were asleep, in the rental house we'd moved into just a couple months before, until my mother-in-law called and told us to turn on the news.

2002
We rang in the New Year in Paris—a wedding present from my mom—and witnessed the changeover to the Euro in near-frigid temperatures. Rob continued his first year of full-time teaching. I applied to the only two graduate creative writing programs within reasonable driving distance, a calculated risk, and was admitted to Mills College for the fall. I also got braces, using my new and snazzy insurance. In the late spring we went to Japan on a shoestring budget, staying with our friend Beth (who was teaching in Osaka) and visiting Kyoto, Hiroshima, Nara, Kobe, and Tokyo. In the summer, I was elected to the Board of Directors of Cymdeithas Madog. We also went house shopping, hoping to buy before the market really went sky-high. We were fortunate, and we hadn't spent thousands of dollars on a wedding. I had a small inheritance from my grandfather, who'd died in 1997, which was just enough for a down payment. We moved across town, and I started grad school. During finals week of my first semester, I started getting hives.

2003
The full-body hives (plus occasional random facial swelling) lasted six months, cause unknown. My braces came off in May, a couple of months early because I'd been good; not long after, I took a course of steroids, my second semester of grad school ended and my hives went away. The most likely cause seemed to be stress. In the summer, I went to my 10-year high school reunion, where I was inexplicably voted one of the "Least Changed" since high school. We continued never-ending house renovations. I became Board secretary. I kept writing for Suite101 and in the fall, continued grad school. I took classes with YA author Kathryn Reiss, and a group study on crafting graphic novels. I started working on my master's thesis project. I think this was also the year my grandmother died, my mom's mom; we weren't close. The housing market started to really spin out of control.

2004
The first half of the year I was focused on finishing grad school and writing my thesis project. In May, I had a brand-new MFA in Creative Writing and was officially a Master O Fart, as Rob likes to put it. May is also when I started up this blog in rather unspectacular fashion. That summer I joined a writing group with some other recent Mills graduates. Also that summer, Rob and I dusted off our role-playing dice and joined a game with a few other faculty from the Junior College.

There was some minor travel: I went to Ottawa, Canada; we both went to Mexico City and, from there, to Celaya, Guanajuato, for our friend David's wedding; we also drove 11 hours to Seaside, Oregon to reunite with college friends at a beach house. Rob had a solo art show at the MJC gallery. I did some mind-numbing and poorly paid temp work in environments such as the wastewater treatment facility, while stressing about finding a long-term job and trying unsuccessfully to get published. Somehow, George W. Bush got re-elected. I ran a 5K for the first time...and the second time.

Facebook Follies

Let me say this right now: I am not one of those people who will add people to my Facebook friends list willy-nilly. I don't ask every person on my friends' friend lists, and I generally only accept friend invitations if I actually know you--that is, if we've worked together, or we've been friends at some point in the past or present, or if I've communicated with you regularly in some capacity. Since this includes a rather wide range of people, including my online and blogging friends, I have a decent-sized friends list.

However: even if we have something in common such as going to school together or having friends in common, I might not add a person on that basis alone. And I surely am not going to add someone whom I remember but didn't actually like.

This is what happened to me this past week. I get a friend request from somebody whose name seems vaguely familiar. We don't have any friends in common, but out of curiosity I click on their profile. It turns out, yes, the person went to my high school, as I was starting to suspect. Then, the more I thought about it, I realized that yes, I did recognize the person's name, and, what's more, I couldn't stand 'em.

In fact, the one extended conversation I even remember having with this person was a rather confrontational one about religious beliefs. As I recall, they were the ones to bring the topic up in the first place, in an argumentative fashion. Since I generally follow the attitude that religion and politics are no-nos in polite conversation--and did even in high school, though I was more willing to debate politics at that point--this was clearly not a situation I was happy to be in. From what I remember, this person started asking me about my religious beliefs. I told them, well, I'm kinda sorta Catholic (which was true at the time). The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Teenage Zealot: Oh. Catholics aren't really Christian. They don't even believe in the Bible.
Me: Yeah, they do--they just don't always take the Bible literally.
TZ: Well, they should take the Bible literally. Anyway, it doesn't matter, since you're all going to go to hell anyway.
Me (having entirely lost patience): Well, half my family is Muslim and Islam says that Christians are all going to hell, so I guess I'll see you there.

Oh snap. Admittedly that's a pretty weak retort, but it was all I could come up with on the spur of the moment at the age of, I think, fifteen. Witty comebacks have never been my specialty, despite reading all the Mad Magazine Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

So, yeah. Needless to say, I did not accept this person's friend request. Getting the request in the first place was a sort of WTF moment, unless they just don't remember who I am and...are maybe adding people willy-nilly.

The Way-Back Machine

Today, I'm not going to blog about all the stuff I've been doing lately, mainly because it's mostly work and not that interesting--some graphic design/DTP, grading art appreciation essays, giving bookmaking demonstrations in one of Rob's classes, etc. etc. Oh. I celebrated my birthday, too. That was fun. I got a new video game for the DS from Rob, which I don't currently have time to play, and some other little goodies from friends and family.

No, today, for some reason, I found myself thinking back to elementary school--specifically, a rather odd school in Ontario (California) I attended from about age 5 to age 7 called Groter School. I Googled it and didn't immediately find anything at all pertaining to the place, so I'm thinking maybe I'm preserving it for posterity here. My mom sent me to Groter School because, evidently, at the time it was the only school in the area that could accommodate gifted kids. We lived in the Rancho Cucamonga area, which wasn't very densely populated at the time.

So my mom finds Groter, which was a relatively nontraditional school. Now, by "nontraditional" what I really mean is "so traditional it's become nontraditional by modern standards." (This will make more sense as I continue the story.) Groter was ungraded, and set up along the lines of a one-room schoolhouse, only there were really two rooms. There was a building with a classroom or two for the younger kids (about K through 2 or 3) and then a separate building with one classroom for all the older kids (3rd through 6th grades, approximately).

The first year I was there, I was in the back building with the littler kids. The two buildings were separated by a rather small courtyard in which various hazardously cramped games of soccer and volleyball were played. There was also a grassy field in back, but I remember the courtyard more because of a couple of memorable ball-in-the-face incidents, one of which resulted in a bloody nose and the other resulting in one of my loose teeth getting knocked out. I seriously did not play soccer for years after that.

That was the second year, though. I don't remember too much from the first year in that back building. One memory I have is of a teacher who would come in periodically (once a week? maybe less often?) to teach us "improvisation." This was basically modern dance for kindergartners. All I remember is, I really liked it because it involved a lot of romping around on the floor, and the teacher was this African-American guy wearing a unitard. The second memory I have of being in the little kids' class was having a rather dictatorial teacher insisting that everybody color with "short, even strokes" (inside the lines, of course--that goes without saying). I clearly recall making a conscious decision to color with long, uneven strokes but trying to do it so well that she'd never know the difference. In retrospect, I ask myself, what's the point?

She also wouldn't let me go to the bathroom one day, and I remember having to pee in my pants as a result. I remember frantically checking and re-checking the orange plastic seat of my chair and hoping I wasn't wetting it. Of course, I then got reprimanded for peeing my pants. It doesn't surprise me, when I look at the technique in some of the pictures I colored at the time, that I seemed to be very angry.

The last thing I remember from that first year was that we started learning Penmanship, i.e., cursive handwriting. But they insisted on calling it penmanship. It was very much like (and may indeed have been) super-traditional Palmer-style handwriting. In fact, I strongly suspect our book was a part of this series. I remember having to copy out parts of the Gettysburg Address (which, incidentally, I would have to memorize and recite the following year in the big kids' class). I did not do very well at penmanship. I mean, jeez, I was only 5 or 6. Ironically, my handwriting is very nice now, if I'm not scrawling in a hurry.

When I graduated to the big kids' class, things got crazy for different reasons. I think I'll save that for my next post. Now that I'm sitting down to think about it, I actually remember a lot. Weird. And I still can't remember stuff I did last week.