~Elementary School - The Difficult Years~

Me & Mary 1969

I remember starting school. My mom tried to do the right thing, to ease me into the experience gently, instead of throwing me to the wolves. She started me too early, though, and I was held back in second grade. I don't remember it bothering me. Instead of being with a bunch of kids that were older than me, these kids were younger. I fell somewhere in the middle.


Mom sent me to nursery school first. It was at a church, and my best friend's mom ran the program. So of course, my best friend was right there with me. I remember playing outside...there were these huge sandboxes that we were never allowed to play in, because neighborhood cats used them as litterboxes.


We colored pictures, and took naps. We drank AM and PM juice. We rode tricycles out in the parking lot.


I can still remember a little about kindergarten....especially the naps...I was big on sleep, apparently. My dad always said that after I was born, any time family members came to the hospital to visit me, I was asleep.

School ceased being fun after kindergarten. I struggled with math, had stomach aches every morning, and cried....wanting to stay home. My parents dealt with this the best that they could. They decided to change schools, and I went to a school out of our district because my dad was a teacher there. It didn't make things any easier. If anything, it was more difficult. I felt that some of my teachers picked on me because they didn't like my dad.

In elementary school, I was friends with everyone. There were no cliques yet. I had lots of friends and went to many birthday parties....I was a social butterfly. Little did I know what loomed ahead...Everything changed in seventh grade. What happened? It was like I had been thrown into the middle of a hurricane. Why aren't Kitty and Allison speaking to me? We were best buddies in 5th grade. Now they won't speak to me!!! I cried many tears my seventh grade year. Other unexplained things began happening. I would have friends that I hung out with on the weekends. During the week we would pass notes to each other, eat lunch together in the cafeteria....then, for no apparent reason, they would just one day not speak to me anymore. This damaged my little psyche more than anyone could know. I had a friend named Susan...we went to the same orthodontist (we would write notes to him and send the notes to him by each other when we went for our brace tightening) we slept over each others houses, went to movies, talked on the phone....one morning I came to school and she wouldn't speak to me, wouldn't look at me. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, she just shut me out, and started hanging out with other girls. I must say that broken friendships were the most painful part of my school years. To this day I am still haunted by some of them.....what had I done to these people? My mom dealt with a lot of tears and would tell me to forget about it...these people had not been my real friends. When would this change? When would I have real friends?