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My father tells me he's found a bunch of old copies of The Lion Roars, and asked me if I wanted them.
The Lion Roars was the newspaper put out at my elementary school. Run by Mrs. Rubin (who now does Yiddish children's theatre, if Google can be trusted), Mrs. Meyers (fourth grade), and a bunch of the kids, mostly the gifted kids. Me. Alick Dearie. Lionel, whose surname I want to give as 'Richie', but then I get all caught up in doubt because of the musician. Phillip Jarrell, the kid who never ate lunch or stood for the Pledge, who I did the lead editorial with one issue in the back corner of the library with Alick's enthusiastic assistance. I don't remember for sure any of the other girls who worked on it, but Emily Morrison must have done. Stacy Theoharis. Mieke Simons, whose surname I probably spelt wrong.
I wanted them. At some point I'll have them in my hands, the long paper, the articles and literary contributions from all the grades in the school, the drawings put in around the margins.
I can't find my photographs from then, and it's really bothering me. I know they're here somewhere, at least some of them. I could probably remember more names with them.
A discussion on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dot_cattiness, of all places, has got me thinking about then and there.
My self-perception in elementary school was as someone who was on the edges of things, someone who watched and wasn't involved and didn't have much in the way of friends. Which is sort of sad, in its way, because it wasn't really true.
My grandfather died when I was in fourth grade; his funeral was on, my memory tells me, Easter Monday, and I had school on Tuesday. I was weepy and incoherent, and was sitting in the corner of the classroom -- my teacher had been notified of this and so I had the space to grieve. Emily came and sat with me and let me talk and lean on her shoulder and cry a little in the private space there behind the big fan. Mrs. Meyers noticed her, but then saw she was talking to me, and let us be.
My parents set up a surprise party for me one year for my birthday. Emily and Stacy and Shari, who went to a different school, who I went to church with -- who, if the person I found on Google just now is her, is helping ESOL kids in Silver Spring learn to read -- and Mieke.
Mieke studied piano Suzuki-style. James and I started to study with her piano teacher after I'd had a year or two of piano lessons from a traditional way, so I already read music. She could play Mozart and other complex classical pieces, all entirely by ear. I still find that utterly awe-inspiring. Her brother Noël, who was much older (like, three or four whole years) took art lessons from my mother for a while, doing the most amazing things. I remember a red dragon, I think in pencil, that he did while I (and Shari?) did our own work on the living room floor, this amazing coiled creature clutching a golden orb.
Stacy kept mice, and I always wanted to build them houses and runs out of tubes and boxes when I went over there to play, which I think she was much less enthusiastic about than I was. One of her neighbours always went all-out for Hallowe'en decorations, and we would go just to see what he'd done each year.
Emily and I played flute, she far better than I. Stacy and her boyfriend Shay played sax. We had an interesting factionalisation of instruments on our crossing-guard corners. Alick played trumpet, Lionel trombone. We all did the chorus, all proud of being able to, being allowed in in the fourth grade, as an experiment, we were told, to see if we could handle it.
Alick and Lionel leaning up against the cabinets under the school windows one afternoon with instruments in hands, discussing the arcanoi of brass as the metal glinted in their hands.
We were all told to bring oranges or lemons or orange juice to before choral concerts, to clear our throats. Since I'm not allowed orange juice, it was lemons for me, which was occasionally very startling. There are recordings of the choral concerts, including one where I was the backup to the soloist and was unconsciously mouthing the words (very clear because I was in center), and also the fact that I have always been an animated and enthusiastic singer.
Mieke had a birthday party one of those years and did something braver than I could imagine doing: invited one of the boys. Specifically, Alick. I wrestled with him in the back of the van, and, in a way that made far more sense to me as a small child than it does now, feigned sleep with dramatic snoring, at which point my wrestling became far fiercer. At least once I piled blankets on him and sat on him. Such is the flirtation of eight-year-olds. Or however old I was at the time.
Emily kept guppies. She brought a bunch into school in fifth grade and gave them to others. The one she gave me was pregnant; I had guppies unto the fourth or fifth generation. She also had two cats, a black one whose name I've forgotten and a mottled-coated one named Tidbit. Chad, her brother, insisted on calling Tidbit either "Mack truck" or "machine gun"; she had the loudest purr I've ever heard on a cat.
I remember the TAG program, which was pulling us out of other class on Friday mornings to sit in the library and do logic puzzles. How long does it take the frog in the well to get out if he jumps up three tiers and slides back two every time. How often is the stopped clock right compared to the clock that loses five minutes every hour? Does the tuba player own a zebra?
I wound up trying to teach fractions to Jorge, one of the Dominican students in the school, because I sat out math classes and he was too advanced for fourth grade math and not enough for fifth. I don't know that I did a very good job of it.
Sometimes I did extra presentations for class in spare time. Most of those were pretty embarassing.
I remember working late on the Lion, doing the artwork around the pieces in pencil, my sketches thin and cartoony and not terribly well-proportioned, with me watching Phillip and especially Alick doing their own artworks.
Working on some editorial with Phillip, sitting on the high chairs in the back corner of the library, trying to get ideas. Alick wandered over to see what we were doing, and we said we were brainstorming. "Brainstorming?" he said, and then put his hands to his head, twitched, flung himself to the floor, and writhed in glorious melodrama, moaning, "Ahh, the lightning, the lightning!"
I remember crawling in and out of one of the display cases in the upper hallway of the school, putting up a display to Challenger with Mrs. Rubin, photographs of the astronauts and information. I probably still ahve that packet somewhere, but it's even less likely to be findable than the class photographs that I know are here somewhere. We'd gotten the materials from Mrs. Bacon, who had been my first third grade teacher (I did every year twice, sort of halvsies) and had then gone to work in the NASA Teacher in Space program.
I remember keeping score for the kickball games for the recesses that Mrs. Williams had playground supervision duty, because she terrified me and I wanted to be out of her LOS. And playing in the Sand Area, with its monkey bars and slides, the rest of the time, playing tag with friends, a particular variant where one person was "It" and everyone they caught became "It" until there was only one left, who was "It" for the next game. I remember foiling one attempt at catching me by leaping off the top of one of the pieces of wooden equipment, barely touching the fireman's pole with one hand, landing heavily in the sand below, a little winded and full of awe at the fact that I had just done that. I never did anything like that again -- I always noticed the possibility first. There's probably a lesson in there.
I started doing latchhook because Emily was one recess, and I found the process fascinating and tried a little.
I remember doing a colonial history summer camp -- learning dances, crafts, that sort of thing, appropriate to the Revolutionary War era -- with Shari and Mr. Alsop, my (second) fifth grade teacher. Learning basketweaving and soapmaking and having semi-period clothes to do line dances in and marbling paper. Listen, my children, and you shall hear . . . .
I moved away when I was ten, to a place where nobody knew me or understood me, and I felt awfully alone then. I tried to keep in touch with people, I went back to visit one day I had no school and they did, but . . . it's hard to do when you're ten. Most of my friends wound up going to ER for high school, so there was the chance of finding them in inter-school rivalry, the gifted schools in the DC area, but . . . I tried to meet up with Alick one day I was doing a competition at ER, and it fell through.
I find myself chewing on the alternate universe where we didn't each go our separate ways. Where we kept in touch when we did go our separate ways. Maybe I'd have been there for Emily when she called me, age seventeen, to talk about motherhood, and been able to know her child. Where I grew up enough to say things in my head. Where all kinds of things happened.
Where we never lost each other.
The Lion Roars was the newspaper put out at my elementary school. Run by Mrs. Rubin (who now does Yiddish children's theatre, if Google can be trusted), Mrs. Meyers (fourth grade), and a bunch of the kids, mostly the gifted kids. Me. Alick Dearie. Lionel, whose surname I want to give as 'Richie', but then I get all caught up in doubt because of the musician. Phillip Jarrell, the kid who never ate lunch or stood for the Pledge, who I did the lead editorial with one issue in the back corner of the library with Alick's enthusiastic assistance. I don't remember for sure any of the other girls who worked on it, but Emily Morrison must have done. Stacy Theoharis. Mieke Simons, whose surname I probably spelt wrong.
I wanted them. At some point I'll have them in my hands, the long paper, the articles and literary contributions from all the grades in the school, the drawings put in around the margins.
I can't find my photographs from then, and it's really bothering me. I know they're here somewhere, at least some of them. I could probably remember more names with them.
A discussion on
dot_cattiness, of all places, has got me thinking about then and there.My self-perception in elementary school was as someone who was on the edges of things, someone who watched and wasn't involved and didn't have much in the way of friends. Which is sort of sad, in its way, because it wasn't really true.
My grandfather died when I was in fourth grade; his funeral was on, my memory tells me, Easter Monday, and I had school on Tuesday. I was weepy and incoherent, and was sitting in the corner of the classroom -- my teacher had been notified of this and so I had the space to grieve. Emily came and sat with me and let me talk and lean on her shoulder and cry a little in the private space there behind the big fan. Mrs. Meyers noticed her, but then saw she was talking to me, and let us be.
My parents set up a surprise party for me one year for my birthday. Emily and Stacy and Shari, who went to a different school, who I went to church with -- who, if the person I found on Google just now is her, is helping ESOL kids in Silver Spring learn to read -- and Mieke.
Mieke studied piano Suzuki-style. James and I started to study with her piano teacher after I'd had a year or two of piano lessons from a traditional way, so I already read music. She could play Mozart and other complex classical pieces, all entirely by ear. I still find that utterly awe-inspiring. Her brother Noël, who was much older (like, three or four whole years) took art lessons from my mother for a while, doing the most amazing things. I remember a red dragon, I think in pencil, that he did while I (and Shari?) did our own work on the living room floor, this amazing coiled creature clutching a golden orb.
Stacy kept mice, and I always wanted to build them houses and runs out of tubes and boxes when I went over there to play, which I think she was much less enthusiastic about than I was. One of her neighbours always went all-out for Hallowe'en decorations, and we would go just to see what he'd done each year.
Emily and I played flute, she far better than I. Stacy and her boyfriend Shay played sax. We had an interesting factionalisation of instruments on our crossing-guard corners. Alick played trumpet, Lionel trombone. We all did the chorus, all proud of being able to, being allowed in in the fourth grade, as an experiment, we were told, to see if we could handle it.
Alick and Lionel leaning up against the cabinets under the school windows one afternoon with instruments in hands, discussing the arcanoi of brass as the metal glinted in their hands.
We were all told to bring oranges or lemons or orange juice to before choral concerts, to clear our throats. Since I'm not allowed orange juice, it was lemons for me, which was occasionally very startling. There are recordings of the choral concerts, including one where I was the backup to the soloist and was unconsciously mouthing the words (very clear because I was in center), and also the fact that I have always been an animated and enthusiastic singer.
Mieke had a birthday party one of those years and did something braver than I could imagine doing: invited one of the boys. Specifically, Alick. I wrestled with him in the back of the van, and, in a way that made far more sense to me as a small child than it does now, feigned sleep with dramatic snoring, at which point my wrestling became far fiercer. At least once I piled blankets on him and sat on him. Such is the flirtation of eight-year-olds. Or however old I was at the time.
Emily kept guppies. She brought a bunch into school in fifth grade and gave them to others. The one she gave me was pregnant; I had guppies unto the fourth or fifth generation. She also had two cats, a black one whose name I've forgotten and a mottled-coated one named Tidbit. Chad, her brother, insisted on calling Tidbit either "Mack truck" or "machine gun"; she had the loudest purr I've ever heard on a cat.
I remember the TAG program, which was pulling us out of other class on Friday mornings to sit in the library and do logic puzzles. How long does it take the frog in the well to get out if he jumps up three tiers and slides back two every time. How often is the stopped clock right compared to the clock that loses five minutes every hour? Does the tuba player own a zebra?
I wound up trying to teach fractions to Jorge, one of the Dominican students in the school, because I sat out math classes and he was too advanced for fourth grade math and not enough for fifth. I don't know that I did a very good job of it.
Sometimes I did extra presentations for class in spare time. Most of those were pretty embarassing.
I remember working late on the Lion, doing the artwork around the pieces in pencil, my sketches thin and cartoony and not terribly well-proportioned, with me watching Phillip and especially Alick doing their own artworks.
Working on some editorial with Phillip, sitting on the high chairs in the back corner of the library, trying to get ideas. Alick wandered over to see what we were doing, and we said we were brainstorming. "Brainstorming?" he said, and then put his hands to his head, twitched, flung himself to the floor, and writhed in glorious melodrama, moaning, "Ahh, the lightning, the lightning!"
I remember crawling in and out of one of the display cases in the upper hallway of the school, putting up a display to Challenger with Mrs. Rubin, photographs of the astronauts and information. I probably still ahve that packet somewhere, but it's even less likely to be findable than the class photographs that I know are here somewhere. We'd gotten the materials from Mrs. Bacon, who had been my first third grade teacher (I did every year twice, sort of halvsies) and had then gone to work in the NASA Teacher in Space program.
I remember keeping score for the kickball games for the recesses that Mrs. Williams had playground supervision duty, because she terrified me and I wanted to be out of her LOS. And playing in the Sand Area, with its monkey bars and slides, the rest of the time, playing tag with friends, a particular variant where one person was "It" and everyone they caught became "It" until there was only one left, who was "It" for the next game. I remember foiling one attempt at catching me by leaping off the top of one of the pieces of wooden equipment, barely touching the fireman's pole with one hand, landing heavily in the sand below, a little winded and full of awe at the fact that I had just done that. I never did anything like that again -- I always noticed the possibility first. There's probably a lesson in there.
I started doing latchhook because Emily was one recess, and I found the process fascinating and tried a little.
I remember doing a colonial history summer camp -- learning dances, crafts, that sort of thing, appropriate to the Revolutionary War era -- with Shari and Mr. Alsop, my (second) fifth grade teacher. Learning basketweaving and soapmaking and having semi-period clothes to do line dances in and marbling paper. Listen, my children, and you shall hear . . . .
I moved away when I was ten, to a place where nobody knew me or understood me, and I felt awfully alone then. I tried to keep in touch with people, I went back to visit one day I had no school and they did, but . . . it's hard to do when you're ten. Most of my friends wound up going to ER for high school, so there was the chance of finding them in inter-school rivalry, the gifted schools in the DC area, but . . . I tried to meet up with Alick one day I was doing a competition at ER, and it fell through.
I find myself chewing on the alternate universe where we didn't each go our separate ways. Where we kept in touch when we did go our separate ways. Maybe I'd have been there for Emily when she called me, age seventeen, to talk about motherhood, and been able to know her child. Where I grew up enough to say things in my head. Where all kinds of things happened.
Where we never lost each other.
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Of course, it's very possible that had you not lost contact, you might still have stopped being friends as you got older and changed. I usually manage to fight off "what if?"-type speculation with this quote from Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett:
"Do you ever wonder what life would have been like if you'd said yes?" said Ridcully.
"No."
"I suppose we'd have settled down, had children, grandchildren, that sort of thing..."
Granny shrugged. It was the sort of thing romantic idiots said. But there was something in the air tonight...
"What about the fire?" she said.
"What fire?"
"Swept through our house just after we were married. Killed us both."
"What fire? I don't know anything about any fire?"
Granny turned around.
"Of course not! It didn't happen. But the point is, it might have happened. You can't say 'if this didn't happen then that would have happened' because you don't know everything that might have happened. You might think something'd be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can't say 'If only I'd... ' because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you'll never know. You've gone past. So there's no use thinking about it. So I don't."
But alternate universes can be useful too. Thinking back to something else you said recently, you might be able to write about it.