Spiel the Beans – School Day Memories
This blogpost was originally written in September 2016 but I’m sharing again for The Blended Blog series because, well, I’m a slacker but when I found this in my files I realized I loved the post! 🙂
Isn’t it random the things we remember from our school days? Here are a few of mine!
1st grade – My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Kirkland, spent alot of time at the beach and she would collect sand dollars and paint them with silver spray paint to hand out as rewards for good behavior. Y’all, I was the model student!
2nd grade – I really still do not know how this happened but I came into possession of a red pencil on the playground and it somehow was stabbed into the mouth of one of my friends. Yikes!
3rd grade – My first time to get in real trouble for calling a boy named Johnny Perches, Johnny Peaches. I’m positive it was NOT my idea. I also remember lying on the reading log and noting I read the Hobbit. Haha!
4th grade – I was picked to participate in the gifted and talented program where we missed school once a week to go do special stuff. I learned to type, quilted a pillow, learned a little spanish and searched for artifacts in a real archaeological dig. It was the most fun I ever had at school I think.
5th grade – Writing notes to each other! We all had some “nickname”, mine was Snoopy, and we wrote tons of notes to each other. And dodgeball….y’all I loved me some dodgeball because I kicked ass!!
6th grade – First time to have anxiety and not know what it was. My mom thought I was just being ridiculous wanting out of honors social studies until she went to meet with my teacher. She immediately left the meeting and pulled me out! My favorite memory, though, was a day we got out of school early due to impending ice on the roads and my daddy picked me up. We grabbed ice cream and drove on some backroads where he pulled over and let me drive! When you are 5’4″ in the 6th grade this is an option.
7th grade – Bus rides! Whether it was for volleyball or basketball or with the church to Friday night football games, bus rides were the highlight at this time! So much fun on the bus with friends!
8th grade – Miss Christian our English teacher played 93Q on the radio in the mornings and was so cool. Looking back now I’m positive she may have had an inappropriate crush on my friend Erich but at the time she was super cool. Oh, and speaking of inapproriate, my mom let me go to the prom when I was in the 8th grade!
High school, sweet high school. I will spare you here but wrote an entire post about who I was in high school last August if you really are dying to know.
School days should be full of fun and laughter but I know mine always weren’t. I think this is a little advice I would give my younger self to make things a little lighter!
Be yourself! I remember heading to pick out a lunchbox for first grade and my very favorite show at the time was the Six Million Dollar Man. I didn’t care that every other girl would be brining Holly Hobbie and I wasn’t afraid to be different. Being yourself will also insure you surround yourself with the right friends instead of forcing yourself into a group you are not comfortable with. This also means dress for yourself. We all want to wear the latest fad but sometimes, even when you are like 12, that look is just not right for you. Find your own style and you will be more confident.
Their family is dysfunctional too! My family was definitely not the norm but I really didn’t know it until I began comparing it to others. I was always wishing for family dinners every night and Sunday mornings together as a family at church like “all my friends”. Turns out there was dysfunction in my friends families too it just was sometimes easier to cover up. All families struggle; love yours and work hard to be a loving part of it.
Learn to laugh at yourself! This one is huge! Being able to laugh at yourself can take power away from others who just want to see you cower. When I was in 2nd grade I wore an outfit and remember loving it and feeling good wearing it. The peach pants, however, were a bit see through and my panties had a design on them. Two boys in my grade noticed and the teasing began and I was mortified. I still remember how small I felt and continued to feel days later all over something so silly. For the record, I do not believe I learned to laugh at myself until I was about 35!
Stand up for other people! Making fun of others is, well, not okay. There were some times when I may have not been doing the finger pointing but I was not stopping it either. I wish so many times I had been the bigger person and stood up in my group to stand up for someone who was being teased or trash talked. When you have kids of your own you will definitely agree with this one!
Don’t rush it! From as early as I can remember, maybe like 4, I wanted to be grown up. Yes, I played hard as a kid and did kid things but I always knew ultimately my goal was being a grown up. I really just always wanted to be older no matter how old I was and many times was hanging out with people who were older too which sometimes got me into trouble. Enjoy every single year and embrace those activities appropriate for your age. Listen when your momma says “nothing good happens after midnight” and get your butt home.
Be proud of your work! When I was in the 5th grade I remember how incredibly proud I was of myself for being one of the first in the class to stand up and recite all the presidents of the US. Maybe I was most excited because the certificate came with a scratch and sniff sticker but I still remember it to this day. School came somewhat easy to me and while my parents were of course proud to see good grades, bad grades did not exactly come with punishment. Of course my brother was the one with the “bad” grades and, being that I had that issue with wanting to be a grown up, I thought he should be punished. In 7th grade I decided to just blow my math grade one 6 weeks; feeling sure my mom would punish me. She did not y’all but instead just asked me if it was the best I could do. It was not my best and guess who was the one feeling crappy about that grade. So be proud of your work and always strive to do your best for yourself.
Mistakes do not define you! If I could choose the number one piece of advice I would give it is mistakes do not define you. I let every mistake I made in my teen years build on one another. Truly believing I could never “make up” for all the ugly things I had done, I just kept making more because that is what other people expected and honestly what I came to expect from myself. Mistakes do not define who you are but should be a part of who you eventually become. Learn from mistakes and use them as building blocks to becoming a stronger person.
Now it’s your turn to share your School Day Memories! Please link to your specific post URL and not to your blog home page.
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You were a doll then and a doll now!! Love the year by year recap and your advice is spot spot on…oh to go back, nah, I love life now even if we are starting to age and can't eat all the sweets in sight, lol!!
Great advice friend! And I'm dying at your school memories – Johnny Peaches! (I'm also loving that we formatted ours the same and didn't even talk about it!) 🙂
Hi Shelly, I am loving the memories from grade school. The silver sand dollars is so cool, and I love all the memories you shared. I also loved all the advice! What a fun post and link-up today!
I love that last piece of advice. So, so true! And getting in trouble for Johnny Peaches…lol! Loved the little recap by year, I'm not sure if I could remember something significant happening each year like that.
You gave awesome advice! And I LOVE that you proudly carried your 6 Million Dollar Man lunch box. I wish I'd know you back then, you could have brought your lunch box and picnicked underneath my Kiss poster, haha!
Haha! Liz…funny story about Kiss. When I was 20 I went to see Kiss on the beach in Galveston. It was during the time when they stopped wearing the face makeup and my roommate and I cheered and cheered and then at some point we realized it was the cover band and not Kiss at all. Lol
It was fun taking a walk back and remembering so many joyful things. I became very self conscious at some point in my life so looking back and realizing I wasn't like that always in school was a fun exercise.
I know!!! Great minds!! Oh Johnny…..he's a lawyer now which really makes it funny!
Totally agree…I love looking back but love where I am now!
Oh my goodness that story has made my day!!!!! Hilarious! That poor cover band must have thought they were beginning to hit e big time due to your reaction–haha!
You share such amazing advice.YES! Stand up for yourself. Be kind. Be yourself. Stay true. Work hard. Put in the time. The effort.
I love this, Shelly!! I went back and read your post from last year, too, about who you were in High School. We might be dangerous together, you were named Biggest Flirt in high school and I was named Best Legs! Ha!!
I really think if we were awarded scratch and sniff stickers in real life, I would be more motivated. Instead of TXU just sending an electric bill, they should include a smell good sticker for paying it on time last month! 😉
As I get ready to drop my oldest off at college tomorrow the timing is perfect for this advice! Thank you, now I'm going to go cry my head off!
Ahhh….Kellyann good luck tomorrow!! My first moved out but stayed in town for college so when the 2nd decided to go farther away it was so much harder but then seeing how happy he was there made me feel so much more peaceful about it. I can't imagine the day I send my youngest!
Eek….I'm cracking up! We might have had a little too much fun. And yes…I totally agree…I still love a good scratch and sniff sticker!
What a fun post! I love all of the tips you would give to your younger self!
Shelbee
http://www.shelbeeontheedge.com
Great tips! If only we could go back and them share them with our younger selves!
Maybe…..just maybe I wouldn't be too stubborn to listen to sound advice the 2nd time around. haha
Thanks Shelbee…it was fun to remember a few things I had forgotten. Sometimes the me I remember is not the most fun side and there really were so many more great times I forget about.