Looking Back at First Grade

I have been looking through some of my old school work and writings and drawings recently. Not out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia, but as a teacher trying to remember what exactly it was like to be younger. I remember most of my childhood very vividly. I can remember much of preschool, from getting dressed for the very first day, to naptime, to Lindsey, the first girl I ever fell in love with. I even asked her to marry me. She said yes. Someday we will meet again.

Still, my image of what I remember my young self being is probably not entirely accurate. At all. As demonstrated by looking through some of the stuff that I wrote and drew as a child. I found some really amusing and interesting things in the attic. I’m thankful my mother saved a lot of this, otherwise my young self would have simply trashed it all. I want to include one story from kindergarten first, titled Rocky’s Adventure. There was definitely help here to write the story which is why there are no spelling errors, and it has colored pictures drawn by yours truly to go along with it, but I will spare myself the embarrassment and just copy the meat of the story. Read on:

Once upon a time there was a bear [named Rocky]. He swung on a rope and kicked a stone. When he kicked the stone it kicked another stone and it made a fire. His hand slipped and then the rock broke and it was burning. Then he fell in a hole and when he fell in the hole, there was a dinosaur. A volcano erupted. The lava dried up and there was a pterodactyl that picked him up. It went down to the lava. And he got off his back but there was still lava and it was hot! Rocky found a tree but it was bad. It was his worst enemy. Rocky took out his hoverboard and there was an avalanche. The tree was throwing teeth at Rocky. Rocky made it back to his house with his best friend. The end.

You can already sense my taste for the violent and epic. Here is an excerpt from a beginning of the year prompt in first grade about my previous summer. All spelling and grammatical errors intact.

“It’s as hot as a burning Stove. Family’s go on vacashions. We have camp fires. We go swimming in the pool. We go to Holaday Camplands in Ohio. We have yard sails. I go to friends houses, play baseball, basketball, football, kickball, tag, dogeball, boling, and volleyball. I’ll draw a lot. I like drawing Tex [this was the "guy" I drew more than any other during my childhood]. We don’t have school. We have party’s. We sing day till night [I have no idea?]. We play in the rain. Watch T.V. Play Super NES and NES.”

We had writing exercises to practice our printing, where we wrote something to a prompt. This was a prompt of what we wished for and it includes pictures, of course:

“I wish I could be a Teenage Mutint Ninja Boy but it will never happen so I’l wish nuthing at all. But I still wish I could Be An Teenage Mutint Ninja Boy.”

Oh, to be young again with such a simple and easy-to-please mind and not to wish for bills to pay themselves or to win the lottery, but for something as simple as being a Teenage Mutant Ninja boy. It almost makes me want to have kids someday.