first grade

Honestly, what I want to be doing right now is flossing, brushing, showering, going to bed. But I painted my nails like ten minutes ago, and there is truly no definite amount of time that can pass before you can safely assume that using your hands will not demolish the art you have just created on the calcium deposits that protect your fingertips. So I'm going to hope that this post will cement the top coat, and then I'm getting the heck on with my life.

First Grade

Where: Dunn
Teacher: Mrs. Nice, I think. If I had to put money on it, I would just back out. I don't remember her name.

The first grade was my first year of eight hour school. Hellish. Who wants to spend eight hours of their entire life surrounded by a bunch of baby plebeians, some of whom do not shower, most of whom still aren't sure what the alphabet is? Also, this might have actually been the year that we got the Texas name tags on the first day of school, because I realized after the kindergarten post that I had long hair that whole year, and I'm pretty sure the Texas tags came with short hair. O, thou faulty memories.

Best days:

The Day of the Flesh Sweat Suit.
When we lived in Arlington, my family was still the poor-looking young family that we were basically until my mom got the snazzy green Honda Civic, which happened when we moved to Longview, and that experience will be related in its entirety in the second grade post. Anyways. I must have had few enough outfits that our next-door neighbor, who had several grown-up kids, shamelessly gave huge black trash bags full of hand-me-downs to my mom on a monthly basis for a while. Most of the stuff didn't fit me (because I was a CHUBBY KID) but there was one sweat suit, which was Honest To Goodness the exact color of my skin, that we kept in my bottom drawer in case of emergency. Well. The Day of Emergency came. Either all my clothes were dirty, or my six-year-old brain decided that wearing a full on sweat suit to school in Texas when it was still warm outside was going to be a good idea. I only remember being so, so hot all day. It was killer. The exact memory is of me, standing in line, getting ready to exit the class room to go home, and my backpack felt like it weighed a million pounds, and I was sweating, and I was wondering how inappropriate it would be to take off my sweatshirt just for a minute. I was not wearing anything underneath. My mom remembers dropping off what looked like a naked, first-grade sumo wrestler at Dunn Elementary that day and thinking "You've got to let them make their own decisions." I did not wear that sweat suit again, but every member of my family, including Jacob, who wasn't even born yet when that day came to pass, swears they can remember how ridiculous I looked that day. Whenever I go shopping, literally every time I go shopping at home, someone will ask me if I found a flesh colored sweat suit on sale. When I used to complain about having no clothes to wear to any given event, the flesh colored sweat suit is suggested. When we look at baby pictures, someone will ask why no one ever took a picture of me in the flesh colored sweat suit. And just then, I say a little prayer of thanks/regret that my mom's Kodak camera was out of film that day.

The Day I Stole
This is the quintessential stealing-things-because-you're-a-dumb-kid story. I was one of five kids in the first grade that started AR (Accelerated Reader, Texas' means by which public educators could track reading stats. You'd read a book at a certain reading level and take a comprehension quiz to get points) early (surprise, some kids can read!), and at the end of the first six weeks, I had racked up enough points to go to the library and pick an award pencil. I went to the library. I liked two pencils. I tried to take them both by stacking them on top of each other in my chubby fist. The librarian caught me. I told her I forgot I was supposed to take only one. I started bawling. The pencils were revoked. My folder was signed. They were both shiny. I regret that day.

The Day Jacob Was Born
My mom was induced in November, at very early o'clock in the morning. That day, they announced into my classroom over the loudspeakers that the baby was a boy (we had already known that was coming, but whatever) and my dad was there to take me to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, my dad took me and Mark to some small grocery store and I picked Doritos and Mark picked Funyuns, and we both got soda, and then we went to the hospital to look at the squishy baby and eat chips. Rudolph was on. I was allowed to hold Jacob, but I got in trouble for standing up while I was holding him. Then we went home, and I remember thinking "this is my last night of peace." How little I knew.
Just kidding, Jacob is great, and I'm glad he came home.

The Day I Forgot How Math Worked
There was one day when we had to take an extensive subtraction quiz, and I literally forgot everything I had ever learned about numbers and how they worked. It was like, just gone. Totally. I sat there and I started to write numbers but I didn't understand and when I went to go ask my teacher how I was supposed to subtract, she didn't even look at me, she just told me that I needed to erase all my answers and start over. So I did. And I guess it worked out in the end. But that was horrifying, and probably also a prequel to how much I would later understand math. (Example, just a week ago I had to solve for X. The easiest possible math problem a 20-year-old could be expected to answer. It took me five minutes, at least.)

The Day I Told on the Sixth Grader
The year I was in first grade was the last year that sixth graders also attended Dunn. I don't know if that's why this project was done, but at any rate, all the sixth grade classes got assigned first grade classes and we got put with partners and they were supposed to help us with homework. I was one of the kids in my class that got two sixth graders, because their class was bigger. One of my sixth graders was not very nice. In particular, they said they hated Ace of Base, the band which sang my favorite song of all time (I Saw the Sign. You better believe it.) and when I said I liked them, they said that was stupid. Stupid is still a cuss when you are six-year-old Madi, so I obviously had to tell my teacher that my sixth grader was a bad kid. I remember looking around at the other pairs that day, and one of the boys in my class was with this tall black sixth grader, and I remember thinking "Why couldn't I have gotten that guy? Why am I stuck with this bad kid?" That kid was subsequently reassigned to some other less tender first grader.

And last but not least....

The Day I Refused To Kiss Leonardo DiCaprio.
Titanic came out in all its cinematic glory in 1997, and that year I was invited to a Slumber Party at a girl's house who was allowed to watch it. I'm still not allowed to watch it. My mom wasn't cool with me sleeping over at her house, but I was allowed to go over for dinner. After dinner, we all went up to this girl's bedroom, and upon the back of her door was a poster (which I remember being life-size, but when you're that short, it might have just been normal-size) of Leo dancing with Kate. I do not know much about the movie (since I have not seen it because I am not allowed to watch it) but I'm guessing this was a part of the movie when they're falling in love. At any rate, the birthday girl said that when she grew up, she was going to marry Leo. And then she said for her birthday, she was going to kiss him, and we all had to kiss him too. So we made a line, and she went first, and you had to run up and jump and try to kiss Leo on the lips. She made it (I assume she had practiced). A few girls missed. When it was my turn, I either knew that my chubby self was not going to make it up there, or my moral compass told me that kissing a man much older than me that was probably married to the woman he was dancing with was not right, so I just said I didn't want to kiss him because I didn't think he was cute.

They probably ignored my comment, but I will always know that that was a lie.

I do think you're cute, Leonardo. And I probz always will.