The Drama

In this case, I don't mean teen drama, although there was plenty of that.  I mean the myriad plays I either had parts in, or some other way got myself involved!

We had four plays every year.  Three were in the Little Theater and one was the big operetta. My goal was to be in all of them!  The first production of the year was the fall play.  My freshman year it was The Lark, a drama about Joan of Arc, and my sister had the lead.  My friend, Jere, Billy's brother, had a major role, too. One of the scenes called for his character to take a big bite out of an onion, as if it was an apple.  The rest of the scene was just Beth trying to remember her lines through a miasma of onion emanating from Jere's person.  I think he smelled like onion for days after, too!  I did not get a part, but put myself on every production committee, Including makeup even though I barely knew a mascara from eye shadow myself!  Ruined a lot of perfectly good make up brushes!  I did much better being an usher and taking people to there seats and handing them a program.

I am going to put the spring Operetta's into their own post, and I am also going to skip ahead and tell you about Spring Play my freshman year.  We did The Apple Tree which is a three part musical with Adam and Eve (Beth played Eve), The Lady or the Tiger, and Cinderella.  When the cast list came out someone told me that I was on the list.  When I saw the list, lo and behold, I was not on it!  (This next part is so embarrassing).  So instead of saying, Oh, bummer! I didn't get in after all".  I just figured a mistake had been made and somehow, I had been left off the list!  I was so convinced that this was true, and I actually repeated the story so many time, that the drama teachers ( A husband and wife team named Mr. and Mrs. Bakewell), actually took pity on me and gave me one line to say in the whole darn thing.  I was never aware of this kindness to a clueless 9th grader and hope they know how grateful and mortified I am!  Being in the play meant I could hang out in the little theater during rehearsals without  just being a nuisance! 

My favorite memory of that is of hanging with Billy.  Billy was also a bit player.  H played a life sized Oscar award.  Really!  He wore a full piece long underwear suit painted gold which meant he wanted to look lean and buff.  He would do sit ups during breaks and had someone feed him an M&M after everyone he completed as incentive!  Talk about defeating the purpose!  I also enjoyed watching Jere sing rock and roll in the Cinderella sequence.   I think that was a pretty serious challenge but he pulled it off through sheer charisma!

 Evening of Drama was another production each year. It was a series of student directed one acts.  There were usually two or three depending on the number of submissions
Kids could pick the play, the cast, and how the wanted the thing to be staged etc.  My  cello stand partner in orchestra was also a theater person.  She was going to direct  The House at Pooh Corner and wanted me to try out.  So I did (and would have anyway) and she cast me as Pooh.  The play took on a life of it's own and JB(she went by her initials which were perfect for a director In the theater "I'm ready for my close-up, JB") got a little carried away.  She named us "The Pooh Company.  She got us t-shirts with our characters names on them (I still have mine!) and she booked us to do performances at the grade schools and for community groups in addition to the actual Evening of drama.  We even went to Six Flags in our t-shirts and got lots of attention there!

My favorite performance was for the Developmentally Delayed adult group.  A story arcs in the play was trying to find Tigger something to eat.  One of the audience member kept yelling out "Eat me!" The funniest part was watching Tigger (Phil) and Eeyore (Randy) try to complete the scene without cracking up!

Here's a pic:  Sitting Roo (Anne), first row Piglet (Kim),Pooh (me), Eeyore (Randy), Christopher Robin (Martin), Tigger (Phil), Kanga (Nancy) Rabbit (Alan). Back Row:  JB, Owl (Michelle) and I think that is our student teacher peeking out from behind.  The funny thing is, that I think our characters matched our personalirties.  Ann was bouncy and curious. Kim was shy but wise.  I was friendly and all about food.  Randy was a little cranky sentimental. Martin was from England, so didn't have to fake the accent.  Phil was frenetic and funny and into everything.  Nancy was like our mini mother. Alan was a curmudgeon intellect.  And Michelle was wise and observant.  I'm  still all about the food, by the way!

 

I'll move on to sophomore year next time.  See ya! 

The real reason I went to school... 

In no particular order, I went to school to a).  Hang with my buds, b). Get dates, and c).  Participate in extra-curricular stuff.  If I  was real lucky, all three would converge.  If  I was super lucky, all three would converge and be an academic  class as well ( choir, orchestra, drama.)

Most of my time was spent in the music category.  I was in the junior church choir and graduated to the senior choir.  I was in the orchestra and took cello lessons.  Upon entering High School, I landed in the Jefferson City Symphony (sounds like a bigger deal than it is).  I didn't have room in my schedule during junior high to be in the school choir, but as soon as I could fit it in, I was in the school choir.  I tried out for and got into the Chorale choir my junior and senior year.  Oh, and we had a church handbell choir and I was in that, too.  Makes me tired just thinking about it now!  And that was just the music potion of my schedule!

You may be wondering how I was able to all of that, (plus all the other stuff I did).  Well, my church choir director, the Symphony conductor and the high school choir director were all the same person!  My orchestra teacher was a member of my church choir and the Symphony, too so there was never any cross over. 

Mr. Burkel was something special for Jefferson City (or really any where for that  matter).  His name was Carl E. Burkel and I  think the "E" stood for enigma. We kids referred to him as CEB amongst ourselves, but had way too much respect for him to call him anything but Mr. Burkel or Sir to his face.  He was a true Renaissance man.  Adept at playing the organ, understanding art, conducting vocal and orchestral music and getting us to sound amazing. 

This man went to Europe every year to see the stained glass windows in obscure churches.  He had a Christmas Ornament collection that had to number in the thousands.  One was made from a splinter of wood he had pulled out of his bum after getting skewered while sliding across a bench that Franz Gruber had sat on to compose Silent Night. His ornament collection was so extensive that he had to hang a different set  each year, and even them,  he had to have a rotating tree stand in order for all of them to be seen. 

Burkel inspired awe in all of us. He, along with my equally wonderful orchestra teacher and the band director created a music program that could rival any in the country - as far as I'm concerned anyway!

I am going to write more about our awesome program, but I want to return to the parsonage for a minute.  My room faced toward the church.  I had a wonderful view of the stained glass and the steeple.  On the hour, the bell would ring and a hymn would play on the carillon.  I know it was actually just a tape, but I thought it was great, anyway.  But better still were my own private organ concerts courtesy of CEB himself.  Every once in a while, Mr. Burkel would come to church on Saturday  to practice on the amazing organ.  I know he usually practiced at home on his personal organ or on the harpsichord he built himself.  But once in a while he needed to hone Sunday music  choices on the real deal pipe organ and so would come to the church. 

In the summer, the windows to the narthex  would be open and I could listen to his whole practice session.  The piece he practiced for the most was Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.  You would recognize the Toccata part as the music for Dracula, but the best part of that piece was the fugue!  Mr. Burkel could really get going to that piece.  His fingers would pretzel themselves across the keys while he deftly pulled and pushed the right stops.  His legs and feet got a workout, too as he played the low pipes, sometimes alone and some times in harmony with his fingers.  His organ playing was 1,000 times harder and took more coordination that driving a stick shift car up the big hills in the snow!

I didn't know what an amazing gift I was given in being privy to Mr. Burkel's private practice sessions. Too young to appreciate how rare and wonderful this was!

Mr. Burkel will figure in future posts, but I want to close today with this.  In Dec. of '95 when my son was just four months old, my dad called to tell me that Mr. Burkel had a heart attack and died.  Fatefully, my dad had been in Jefferson City and had been able to see Mr. Burkel and show him pictures of Eli just the day before .  So, now I think Eli has a special place as one of the last new babies to be in Mr. Burkel's life.  I choose to believe Mr. Burkel  is watching over Eli and the rest of us while wailing away on the best organ in Heaven.  And he doesn't even have to practice to get every note exactly right!

Sunday school building

I am going to regress a little, because I think the old Sunday school building needs a shout out.  The church truly surrounded the parsonage because Sunday school was held in a whole separate building.  This building, since torn down, was on it's last legs when we got there, and it met it's demise in '80 or there about.  But until then, it was a quirky old gem of a building.

First off, it had a little two lane bowling alley in the basement.  I didn't have an automatic pin setter, so we took turn picking up and resetting pins and sending back balls.  There was always the possibility that, if you had an over-eager bowler, you could become one of the targets.  I don't remember anybody getting hit, but I think there were a lot of close calls. 

There was also a raised caged in ping pong room.  You could see into the cage from the gymnasium, so I guess if you wanted to have a tournament, the audience could be safe from stray ping pong balls!  I say it was a ping pong room cause that's what we used it for, but who knows the original purpose!  Maybe it was for punishing stray Christians...

 On the upper floors, there was a large open area and an actual stage.  The large room was ringed on all sides with a balcony.  the 2nd floor rooms all opened off of the balcony.  Under the balcony, were a series of open rooms,  slightly elevated from the main floor.  One of the upstairs rooms had a definite slant, and we were cautioned not to have more than one person in that room at a time.  I think it was condemned!

 Oh, and there was an old fashioned coke machine that had its home on the landing heading into the gym.  I hope someone rescued that machine, because it would probably be worth a fortune now.  For a quarter, you could get a full size glass bottle of coke!  That was a deal even then! 

I remember my mom producing at least one play on that stage.  There had been an active theater group at our Calvary church, where we were members in St. Louis, and we had fun recreating the tradition in Jefferson City, too. 

The Sunday School building was the scene of many Spaghetti Suppers, Chili diners, pot lucks, and of course, ice cream socials!  Ice cream socials were an excuse to make and eat massive amount of homemade ice cream.  Fortunately, Central Dairy made an ice cream starter. I actually think you didn't have to do anything to it except put it in the ice cream maker.  I am talking about the old fashioned, crank-until-you-get- tendonitis type ice cream makes.  Just add rock salt and crank for what seemed like hours.  But the result?  Nothing better than soft, runny ice cream straight out of the maker.  We must have had a huge number of machines and every kid in the congregation took a turn at the crank.  No one argued about doing it, because I don't remember any limits to how much we could eat! 

I also want to talk about the massive hill behind the church.  The hill bottomed out at the church parking lot and then continued on behind the Sunday school building.  In the winter, we would sled down the hill behind the church and sail across the parking lot.  If we were really moving, we could keep going down the next hill.  We had to be careful, though because that hill evened out onto a seriously busy street (for Jefferson City any way).  It does snow in Missouri (for anyone who thinks Missouri is the deep south.  When I went to Michigan for grad school, people actually used to ask me if I had ever seen snow...)

 We used to park our car  in the church parking lot because the garage was scarily small.  I learned to drive in Missouri among the hills and later taught myself how to drive a stick shift.  (You haven't really driven a stick shift until you've driven one where there are hills!)  But at the time, we had a Ford Maverick. I didn't know that I could adjust the seat, so I drove the thing with my 6'5'' father's seat settings. I'm 5'4''  Once when I was at a rehearsal for the Jefferson City Symphony, it snowed so I had to drive home, up and down a bunch of hills, in the new slippery snow.  It felt like it took forever.  I finally got into the church parking lot, skidded around some more and never got it into our spot.  I trudged up the hill to our house (carrying my cello),  Got into the house and yelled,  "The car's in the middle of the parking lot.  If you want to move it you'll have to do it yourself!"     My mom says she remembers me using the '"f" word, but I think I wouldn't have at that time.  At least not to my parents!

Academics

Obviously the main thing I remember about high school is the academics.  Okay, that's a lie...

If I do remember a class it was either that I was  terrible at it and hated it, or because I loved the teacher.  I used to think the math part of my brain was missing.  Now I usually say I don't do math because I chose to use my limited IQ points to do something useful instead.  Those math teachers who tell you  that you will use the school brand of math are full of it.  Unless you are going to be an engineer or someone who does something mathy, you don't.  God invented calculators, and the only math I consistently do in my head is percentages.  You gotta know what to tip, and if 30% off puts the cost of a sweater  into your budget.  Otherwise, it has not been useful for me.  Besides, all the math classes at my school were taught by coaches.  I did not like calling my teachers "Coach".  They weren't MY coach! 

So algebra and geometry were largely a waste and just served to lower my GPA.  I also had a coach for one of my history classes.  What I most remember about him was that a kid actually lit up a joint in one of his classes.  I was not in that class and it may have been an urban legend, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was true.  I like history enough that despite my refusal to call the teacher "Coach", I did okay in that class. 

Here is a very surprising thing.  I aced economics/  I know that I did better than almost anyone, because I got to go to some economics seminar to observe along  with the other kids who did well in that class.  I only did well because it was 99% (Ah! A percentage!) memorization and I was good at memorizing and spitting out what I memorized. Fortunately, my fiend, Martin, went to that seminar, too, and we spent the whole tie playing tic tac toe and dots. 

I also had a great history class my senior year.  We didn't have AP (advanced placement) classes, then but there were a few classes that you had to have certain GPA's to get in.  So I got to be in advanced American History.  The teacher for this class had a PhD in something like medieval religions.  He would sometimes dress like a Calvinaist Minister to tell as we all were predestined to end up in Heaven or Hell.  If we were predestined for Hell there wasn't much you could do about it, but if you were destined to Heaven you had to keep your nose clean or you would go to Hell anyway.  I guess you really didn't know what would piss God off, so you had to be perfect.  Maybe this particular idea was why Calvinism didn't last.  People would make one mistake and say "Screw it!  I'm going to Hell anyway, so I may as well have fun in the meantime!"

  Doc Robert's (the teacher) was pretty irreverent, but I actually think I learned some things in that class.  I had him for sociology, too.  Most of our grade was based on whether we could come out ahead in our fake  marriage.  We had to partner up,  then you and your faux spouse had to decide how to manage your starter money that you were given according to  roll of the dice.  This is actually a lot like life.  Your start in life is a crap shoot.  You could be foolish and spend all your money on a fancy car or an extravagant wardrobe, or you could get insured, invest, save, go to college...Then you had to spin the wheel of fortune.  You may get in a fiery car crash or have triplets or be robbed.  Your grade was based on whether you got through whatever and still be in the black.  It sounds like a no-brainer, but some kids actually failed because of stupid decisions.  Teenaged brains are wired to override everything but enjoyment.  Some kids couldn't even resist fantasy enjoyment.

My music classes were the ones I enjoyed the most, of course, and I think they deserve a separate blog. 

Otherwise, memorable things include passing note with BJ in College Prep English(I still have some of them and we were just CRASS!) and having to square dance as part of PE.  For some reason, the PE teacher really liked me, so I actually did well in her class even though, even then, I was lucky to walk without scraping my knuckles on the floor.

Next time I will tell you about my music teachers.. 

One more basement story:

I thought of another basement story which I think bears mentioning.  This incident was not in one of our houses, but was in a home away from home!  I have spent a lot of time in church basements 

I think church basements all look alike, to some degree.  They all have little kitchenettes to store communion wine, and tons of cookie trays for after church reception.  One of the church basement (I think at Calvary UCC in Overland Missouri where I actually got married. ) had a tiled in shuffle board court! 

A lot of church basements also have pillars to support the upper floors.  Theo ne in Godfrey had those.  As a kid, I would run around those pillars, holding on with both hands.  If I got going fast enough, it felt as if the pillar was spinning instead of me.  I had the power to make the whole church spin while I was actually staying in one spot!  One day I got a lesson in physic.  A body in motion tends to stay in motion.  I learned that, when you hands slip off of a slippery church pillar, you tend to fly through the air.  I then learned another law of motion.  For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When you land and hit your face on a hard surface, you tend to have your teeth knocked out.  The dentist told my parent not to worry since they were baby teeth and I could just wait until my permanent ones came in.  This is how I spent what seem like years with no front teeth. 

Now on to 7th grade.  At least by then, I was no longer toothless.  The best thing about seventh grade, was that I had to walk past Central Dairy to get there. 
Central Dairy is  an old fashioned ice cream parlor with wooden bunches and the best, cheapest Ice Cream creations.  Here is a link to their website http://www.centraldairy.biz/commercials.html

Of course, I didn't get ice cream everyday, (although I would have if I could), but it was nice to dream about it.   I can't remember the exact situation, but Junior High was broken up in two separate building a block away from each other.  At one point, one of the building was a ninth grade only, but somewhere along the line this changed.  I just remember that there was a time I had to walk between the two building to get to orchestra.  We are not talking a few buildings away here.  This was at least one city block and up a huge hill!   The building formerly know as junior high is now the performing arts center in Jefferson City http://www.themillercenter.org/  It always did have the best auditorium and it was where all the big performances took place including the High school musicals (we called them operettas) and all the big concerts. 

Junior High was not something I was ready to do.  I had just gotten used to a certain level of popularity in 6th grad (hard won and not without scars) just to be thrown into a big nix of kids all jockeying for the same social position.  It did not help that I was still a dreamy introvert at heart and didn't really understand the necessary interactions need to be "popular". Popular in junior high has nothing to do with how nice or smart you are.  It has everything to do with being cute, wearing the right clothes and being able to do the splits.  This is not an invective against junior high kids.  This is basic neurology and development.  Around age 10/11/12 kids identify themselves with their possessions.  I have a Nintendo DS, therefore I am.  I knew that I would never become relevant in junior high through possessions or appearance, so I attempted to due it through sheer exposure.  I ran for student council president and tried out for the talent show.  I tried to hang out with kids who had some perceived power. The interesting thing, is that it probably looked from the outside like I was confident and happy with myself.  But all of my actions had everything to do with the exact opposite. 

Most people think that the term introvert means shy and extrovert mean friendly and outgoing.  Actually shy and introvert are not synonyms at all.  One can absolutely be a gregarious friendly introvert.  An introvert is someone who is more inwardly reflective and who is satisfied doing thing by themselves.  Acting and public speaking are frequently easier to an introvert than interacting in a crowd.  Although one on one conversations are easier and more satisfying to an introvert, big groups and parties are just tedious and difficult to navigate.  Now put an introvert into a big building teeming with 12 and 13 year old, all in varying stages of physical and emotional development and you have a disaster waiting to happy.  Pair that with a keen sense of social standing, but without any sense of awareness of appropriate comportment and you have an awkward, clueless disaster happening. 

I was a classic victim of the 13/33/63 rule.  At thirteen you worry about what everybody else is thinking about you.  At 33 you no loner care about what everybody is thinking about you and at 63 you realize no one was ever thinking about you at all!

Lets just leave it this.  I made it through 7th and 8th grade semi -intact and move into 9th grade at the big high school on the top of yet another hill.  Unfortunately, I no longer had to walk by Central Dairy to do so!

Confession

I confess,  I was a "mean girl"  at least twice in my life.  You would think it would have been in St. Louis where I was feeling pretty confident in myself, but confidence does not necessarily breed meanness.  Mean girls are not created through feeling good about yourself.  They are created through jealousy and fear of losing status.  The one thing necessary is feeling of a certain level of power. 

I made it through the remainder of fifth grade and started to feel better about myself that summer.  I started camp at MoVal and was actually pretty popular and accepted there.  I was immersed in church choir and youth groups which further help me like myself a little more.  When 6th grade rolled around, I found myself feeling more confident around the other kids.  I could actually notice them look at my with new respect when I wasn't being a bragging dweeb. 

However, my ego was still pretty fragile and easily bruised.  It didn't take much for me to be  a mean girl.

My old boss used to have terrific hissy fits about "self esteem".   Any time someone used the term he would rant about how research showed that self esteem has nothing to do with positive behavior and that the worst criminals can base their self esteem on being the best safecracker or being able to beat up the most people.  Within a definition of self esteem being how you rate yourself against others and how great you are at accomplishing tasks, that is pretty true.  There is plenty of research to show that we have gone way overboard in thinking we can't let kids face failure for fear of hurting their ability to achieve.  But it is absolutely true that very bad choices can come from a place of feeling incompetent and uncomfortable in one's own skin.

I, (along with actual researchers and scholars, of course) have come to realize that we're not talking about self esteem in those cases.  We're talking about shame.  Have you ever done something stupid and felt guilty about it?  Guilt is a good thing. It keeps you from repeating behaviors.  Stop me if I've told this story before...or just skip it or something...  Once I was in Michael's craft store.  I picked up some little wood beads for 99 cents and stuck them in the cart.  I got a few other things and when I went to check out, they weren't there.  Bummer,  I must have dropped them  When I got to the car and reached into my purse for my keys, low and behold, there were the beads.  I shoplifted them.  Oops!  I was a little embarrassed and felt a twinge of guilt!  (not enough to go back and pay for them, necessarily.  What's 99 cents to a gigantic, overpriced corporation - That's a rationalization.  Gotta use those, occasionally)  All of that to say, guilt is feeling bad about something you have done, a behavior or action.  Shame is a feeling that you are a bad person.  I am not a bad person because I accidently shoplifted from Michael's.  It was an accidental (I swear) bad behavior.   But somehow, when I was a kid, I got the idea that my right to take up space in the universe was directly tied to my ability to seen as intelligent and to get good grades.  Mom, Dad, I blame it all on you!  No, my parents did the best they could and raised us well.  I think this was a built-in, comes-standard-with- this-kid trait that was exacerbated by life circumstance.  It's nothing a little intensive psychotherapy couldn't take care of...

So I think shame is at the root of my mean girl behavior because it has absolutely nothing to do with the person I was mean to.

In six grade, my teacher was also the music teacher.  She was great.  But, there was another teacher who we may have had for math.  I don't remember why, but a few of us were hanging out in his room at recess.  My dear friend Carole, my rescuer and confidant, was usually part of this group, but for some reason was not in the room that day.  How on earth the teacher was talking about this I cannot explain, but at some point he told use that Carole was super smart.  The rest of us were fine students but Carole was head and shoulder smarter than the rest of us.  Now, Carole IS super smart.  Graduated in the top ten in my high school class.  But, I did NOT like being compared unfavorably to anyone! 

It had never occurred to me to be jealous of someone for being smarter than me!  It had certainly never occurred to me to be jealous of Carole!  But my fragile ego was badly bruised that day.  If I had been older, I could have told that teacher that there were all kinds of intelligence and that trying hard has much more to do with academic achievement that inmate intelligence anyway.  If he had said, Carole is just better at achieving and takes more pleasure in trying hard, it wouldn't have cut me to the quick.  Since I was in 6th grade and didn't know what I know now, I couldn't tell him what an asshole I thought he was or how badly he hurt me, so I took it out on the person who least deserved it.  I was mean to Carole!!

Meanness in girls is not the typical bullying that you see in, say Christmas Story.  It isn't making fun or  extorting lunch money.  It's leaving out and backstabbing.  I made it my mission to exclude Carole from sleepovers and to get our other friends to do the same.  It didn't hurt my cause that they were probably jealous of Carole, too!

I do not know how long this went on, but since there are lots of reasons to be jealous of Carole, it may have been a while!  Back at the parsonage, my dad got wind of Carole's hurt feeling.  Doesn't take long for that kind of thing to get through to a minister.  Since Carole and her family were good church members, I am sure there were adult conversations and keen behavioral observations and eventually my dad ask me what was going on between me and Carole.  I had an epiphany moment, and realized that my being mean to Carole A) had nothing to do with how I actually felt about her and B)  I actually hurt her feelings and C), being mean didn't make me smarter than her!

I'm pretty sure I called her up that day to arrange a sleep over and she never said anything to me or asked me why I was so mean to her!  She is amazing! 

I just have to say that Carole is still one of my favorite people and that I think getting through tough times together makes a friendship that much ore special.  Here's to you, Carole.  Now let me explain about the 7th grade locker fiasco...

5th grade

As I said I previous posts, moving in 5th grade was hard.  I have since come to understand, that pre-adolescence and middle school/junior high is a brutal age for girls especially. 

The good thing about being the new minister's kid was that there was a built in welcoming committee.  The youth group at the church had an roller skating party for on the first night we were there!
( As a disclaimer, I am not changing names.  I am only using first names, and if any one of the people I mention would like me to change/not use name/pics, I will do that.  But I am not planning on saying anything negative about anyone, anyway)

I think I may have posted or written about Billy elsewhere  in this blog, but he figured so strongly that first meeting and throughout my time in  Jeff City that I am going to write about him again. 

I know that I met a lot of kids that day, some of whom would be great friends, but Billy was the most memorable.  Billy was a person whom I think fiction writers wish they could think up in their heads.  Billy had not one mean bone in his body,  He could be a little catty, mind you, but he was mostly just joyful and eager to meet everyone.  Billy was actually a pretty adept ice skater, but he could get around on roller skates well, too.  I was so fascinated by his joie de vive and his fancy skating tricks.  I cannot remember a time that Billy was smiling or without a devilish twinkle in his eye.  He tore up the skating rink that night.  One of the kids broke her ankle that night, but the excitement of a broken ankle just did not compare the excitement of watching Billy skate backward and jump into a sit spin!

The next day at church, Billy was talking with my mom.  They were discussing blisters he had formed while skating .  He said "They feel squishy...Squishy is the only word"  I had never met anyone like Billy before!  Who talks to adults like that?  Billy figured strongly in my life, but for now, I will just say he left quite an impression! More on Billy to come.

Except for overlap in about a billion places, it felt as if my church life and my school life were pretty separate.  At church, I felt comfortable and accepted.  School was another matter.  My one hope for acceptance was my friend, Carole, who was in the other class.  We didn't even have lunch together!

Parents, don't kid yourself that kids in grade school are not hierarchical.  I could see the class social and academic hierarchies from the first day, and knew that I was going to need to vie for my spot.  I had come from a school where I was in the top social strata and was, .let's face it, a true teacher's pet.  Once, when we had a substitute in my St. Louis class, the teacher had left a not for the her with instructions to "Have Amy read to the class from The Arabian Nights."  And no one in the class jeered or blinked an eye or  gave me grief!  I read at least one story and got so engrossed, that I forgot I was reading aloud in front of the whole class.  Oh the power!!

So I came from one end of the spectrum and landed firmly at the other with no idea how to respond!  I tried bragging about how great and popular I was.  Total turn off.  It wasn't much of a try and I was soon out of ammunition.  One day in art class, a girl ( who would become my friend)  Told me my picture was cute.  I knew she was being condescending (although I didn't know the word for that then), and I hated myself for responding.  I also hated that I wasn't an adult favorite.  I had never been in trouble with a teacher before, and now, through no fault of my own, (I plead ignorance of the law), I was getting yelled at for walking on the grass, or talking too loud.

This school sucked!  I should mention that after my sister's first day of seventh grade, she walked in the house, through down her purse and yelled "I'm never going back to that school again!" .

I played sick for two, maybe three days, before my wise parents (who I know saw through the ruse from the start), gently told me they knew I was faking and told me to get my wimpy self back to school.  No, really they asked me what was wrong, and having them listen to my woes was enough for me to get back on the proverbial horse and go to school.  Do, you know what saved me?  I could sing.  I actually had someone say years later, that no one knew what to make of me until I opened my mouth and could actually sing.  If I knew that's all it took, I would have walked in singing the National Anthem!

Potential crisis in the parsonage!  To be continued...