I remember my first day of school; when Mother and I arrived, there was only the teacher and another mom with her little boy, Carroll; they suggested the boy and I go play on the teeter-totter; I don't think either of us really wanted to.
At some point in my first year of school, I decided at first recess to slide down the teeter-totter as though it were a slide. This turned out to be one of my worst ideas ever, since I picked up what felt like dozens of splinters in my buttocks, and I could do nothing but sit on the source of my pain all day long. As soon as I got home that day, I told Mama what happened; she had me lay face-down on the couch while she removed the splinters one by one. What a relief!
I remember, on bad-weather days, playing "Upset the fruit basket". I loved that game. Do children ever play that any more?
There was a sandbox-table in the front of the schoolroom on the right; if we got our assignments done, we could go there and play quietly. A little boy and I were playing there, and I just couldn't stop whispering to him; Mrs. Eighmy tapped me on the head with her pencil to shush me, and it broke my heart. I loved my teacher.
I remember us students singing "Who Can See The Wind" and "This is My Father's World".
I recall a Christmas program where we sang, "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth". We used licorice-flavored gum to cover our two front teeth so it would look like we had lost them.
I used to walk home from school when the weather was good; I have no idea how far it was, probably a mile or so. My mother warned me to never accept a ride from anybody because some murderer she heard of had lured a little girl into his car, cut her in pieces, and thrown her body parts out the window of his car, one piece at a time, as he drove. So when the father of one of my schoolmates offered me a ride home, you can bet I refused!
My mother had all kinds of horror stories to fit any occasion. Like the one about some little kid that swallowed too much chewing gum and had to be taken to a hospital where they operated to remove the big ball of gum from his stomach; or the lady who bit her fingernails and swallowed the bits of nail she chewed off, and they lodged in her appendix and cause appendicitis.
I remember taking bread-and-butter sandwiches as my school lunch, and Mother explaining to the teacher that we had other things to eat, but that's the only kind of sandwich I liked. Mother didn't want anybody thinking she didn't feed her child properly.
And that's todays walk down memory lane.