Monday Morning Memories #3

I know it's not morning (here anyway) but I have an excuse. Calvin's parents are in town & we've had a morning full of baby lovin'. Now exhausted, she's been sleeping for the past almost 2 freaking hours & still going strong!! This, my friends, never happens. The naps around these parts usually last about 45 mins. max. I am beside myself & don't know what to do. Of course I am blog surfing now that the in-laws have gone out for a while instead of doing some much needed office organizing but hey, you gotta come down from that Mother's Day high slowly or you will crash & burn. Hard. So I'll do my bills tomorrow honey. Promise.

Rory, Happy (belated) Birthday my bro-in-law. I spent hours looking for a picture of you to put up here but came up empty handed so I gave up posting yesterday. I hope many tall smooth glasses of delicious Guinness went down easy & with no morning after the night before bitterness. breithlá sona duit

And now, on to the memory, complete with an embarrassing picture (hey mom, I finally found that box of photos & I'll bring them when we come out to see you). That's why I'm here people. To embarrass myself for your pleasure.


Princess

For grades 1-3 I went to Red River School on Main Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was basically a two room school with some other rooms for administration. The three lower grades were in one room & grades 4-6 in the other. It might have been some sort of open concept education or it might have just been small. There weren’t a lot of houses in that part of the city then – we were pretty rural. Prior to this I had attended kindergarten at Governor Semple School & I loved the principle because he always called me princess. He knew my mother somehow so I think I got a little special treatment, plus I was a total suck-up / teacher’s pet. For some reason he was also the principle at our school though he mainly stayed at the larger one.

One day he came to our little school to sit in on some classes (auditing the teachers I suppose) & it was very exciting. At the time we were practicing our letters & the teacher told us to draw some S’s & make them as pretty as we could. Besides being the suck-up I was also the artist of the bunch & I knew how to make S’s like nobody’s business. I went to work making the most exotic fancy bunch of S’s I could. There was one made into a snake complete with hissing tongue, while others were large block letters filled with beautiful flowers. There were scrolling ones with super flourishes on the ends & very architectural bold ones. It was freaking fantastic & I was so very proud of my wonderful accomplishment.

Of course I was finished before everyone else was & wanted to show off to my favorite principle, hoping he would pat me on the head with a “that’s a talented princess”. So off I went up to the front to show the teacher who was busily talking to the principle. Being seven years old I didn’t understand that those S’s were supposed to be keeping us busy while she was probably stressing out showing him her curriculum. I went up & stood patiently beside them waiting to show my masterpiece. She looked down at me & took a gander at what I had been doing & showed the principle. I think she shook her head & laughed a little so I beamed up at them expectantly. Then she told me I needed to make regular S’s, that I wasn’t supposed to be doing artsy things to them. Then I was sent back to my seat.

I was totally crushed & embarrassed that I had made a mistake. A huge mistake. In front of the principle. I scribbled over & scratched the wonderful S’s I had made & wrote regular ones, in between the lines, over & over again. I had to make it up to the principle. I had to show the teacher I was still the smartest in the class even though I had done the wrong thing. The principle left without seeing that I had fixed it all up, but as he left he did say “Bye princess”.

Grade 1 baby!