the third grade and the fourth grade (the boring years)

Third Grade
Where: Gary Elementary
Teacher: Mrs. Munn

The third grade was great... Sort of. It was great when compared to Longview, but almost anything is great compared to Longview. You would think that by year 4 of school, I would be used to it. But the third grade reignited the flames of hate towards educational institutions that I felt so passionately in kindergarten. I tried to get out of school a lot of times that year. It didn't usually work.

One day I decided that I should wear a set of homemade play clothes to school that had been made for me when I was... 6? They were very small. It was like I was wearing underwear. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but I definitely did. It was the opposite of the flesh sweats. They were navy with white polka dots.

Gary is an amazing building in Tyler, one of the oldest in the downtown area. So the architecture is way cool, especially in the auditorium. It's just really vintage. I don't know if they preserved it when it became offices, but that was the coolest room. That being said, there was no playground. There was literally a patch of dirt with a huge construction cement tube in the middle, and a set of three bars that came maybe four feet off of the ground that you could swing yourself on. And that's it. So one of the fun things we did at recess was walk around an empty parking lot next to the playground that had a huge squiggly blob painted on it. We would walk on the squiggly line. It was great.

The gifted and talented program was located in an ROTC building across town, so once a week they would ship us off to this building. One of the classrooms had sheep brains in it. Way cool.

The worst day of the third grade was the day I refused to write a how-to paper about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was so beneath me. We had had to write how-tos like a million times, and I had it down, and I was NOT going to do it anymore. My grumpy strike, signified by me refusing to pick up my pencil when the assignment was given, was addressed by my teacher taking me out into the hall and sitting me down and saying that I must be having an off day but I was going to have to do this assignment. I started crying. I had to move my pin down. But worse than that: I had to write the stupid, freaking, terrible how-to paper.

The third grade was also the first grade in which I made a best friend. Holla to you, Hannah Ritchie! She was nice to me even though I wasn't nice to everyone else.

You guys. I was kind of a snob. A chubby, school-hating snob.

Fourth Grade
Where: Caldwell Elementary
Teacher: Mrs. Duke

The Gary school building was retired the summer after the third grade, and they moved that student body to a spanking new building a few blocks north. Y'all. This was the best elementary school on earth: Caldwell Arts Academy.

That being said, fourth grade was not a red letter year. My teacher was retiring that summer, so she was basically done. The whole last month was spent giving away classroom choch to all of us needy 9 year olds.

One day my science project was stolen and broken. I found out who done it, with the help of my teacher, and that girl literally got sent to juvy. #sorryboutdat

Fourth grade is the first year you take a Texas History course, so it was basically the beginning of my TX love affair.

This was the year that I met Megan Troxell, kind of. She was in a different class, but whenever I saw her I was like "I bet she's cool." Little did I know, she's cool to the power of awesome. Times 809238491.

9/11 happened when I was in the fourth grade, and none of us really understood it. We just knew that our parents were worried, and the day after we came back to school we all said the pledge really emphatically. I remember that. We were like yelling it.

One time, I was nominated to be class president. We got a new president probably every 2 weeks. Voting was heads-down-thumbs-up-let's-play-seven-up-style, so that you couldn't see who was voting for who. The day I was nominated, I had just watched an episode of Recess in which TJ and Vince were running against each other to be president or king of the playground for a day or something like that, and in the end of the episode Vince admits that he voted for TJ. TJ voted for himself. That just seemed so selfish to me. So in a moment of absolute charity and a love for my fellow man, I decided to not vote for myself. I was very proud. I don't remember who won.

The only other thing that I can think that would have happened that year has nothing to do with school. We moved to a house across town that was a Real Fixer Upper, so before we actually move-moved in, a lot of nights we would go to this house and our parents would paint and we would sit in the two-man blue tent that we decided to bring and set up to make the whole thing an adventure (slash we had to sit in there and make sure Jacob didn't escape and ruin the paint) and wait until they were done so that we could go home and go to bed. One of the things we did in that tent was listen to the Beatles album 1 on repeat. I thought that Paperback Writer was "Take the Back Right Side." My favorite song was Eleanor Rigby.

One other thing that would have happened that year is that I thought it would be funny to put a long tootsie roll in my mouth and sing "We Three Kings of Orient Are... Chewing on a rubber cigar" as I came downstairs on one of the days of Christmas break. On of my parents told me that taking upon the appearance of evil is sinning. I've been kind of sore about that for 12 years now.

This was also the year that I got sick after eating chocolate pudding, and then I could never eat it again.

Mark's bike was stolen.

Jacob learned how to put movies in the toilet.

I was an M&M for Halloween.

I don't even know what else you could possibly want to know about my childhood.