Zona

None of you are here on weekends anyway

I kinda had big blog plans this year seeing that I turn 50. I was gonna wax nostalgic but there is so little of my childhood that I recall. I can't remember my 1st grade teacher's name but I remember all the others

Hardee
Colecleasure
Coffee
Bright
Kaiser

Mr Kaiser was my fave. He was so cool but looking back now, I mean come on, he was a sixth grade teacher. How cool could he have been to like, grown ups?

I remember being on the school safety patrol and getting kicked off for telling a friend who was a captain that his arm injury was fake. He then ratted me out and I got tossed off stopping traffic while everybody crossed the street detail. I've had a beef with authority ever since.

Most of what I do remember was bad and I created it.

I think I have/had ADD. That was unknown in my days and when you were me you were called a day dreamer and one who had a short attention span. I just thought I was bored. My mind wandered alot too.

I was never real good in sports because I was small and slow and rarely played in any league because my family didn't have the money for extras like that. Now I'm big and old and slow.

I had a huge crush on a girl named Leigh in 5th and 6th grades but knew that she was way out of my league so I settled on making a play for a girl named Dani who made a fool out of me. Last I heard, Leigh had moved to England to go to college and married a chap from over there. I think I saw Dani some years ago and she looked like a welfare mother.

When I was in the 6th grade a girl named Sandra told a mutual friend, Robert, to tell me that she liked me. I liked her too but was too petrified to tell Robert that I did so that ended any chance with Sandra. In the 7th grade Sandra dated an older boy and got pregnant. I know that would have been me if I would have shaken my shyness for a day. Maybe that was one time it saved my ass.

My best friends in those days were Bruce and Eugene. Those guys were very intelligent and when I saw them at our 20th high school reunion I told them that I kept expecting them to show up at some NASA briefing on the news and we all laughed.

I remember praying in school for lunch.

God is great
God is good
God we thank thee
for this food

I think it's pretty wild that I remember that.

Oh, Peter Howell was the name of my elementary school and whenever I'm home I drive by it at least once. Mr McCrary was the principal. I have no idea what Peter Howell had done to warrant a school named for him.

I was in a rocket club and made several rockets that we launched on the playground of my elementary school. I STILL have a bunch of rockets in a closet and always want to launch them but never do.

My sister had a cat for a pet but I only had a hamster. The cat ran away. My hamster died. I was one of those kids who tried to save birds who had fallen out of their nests but always failed, and always cried.

I was in my 5th grade class' production of Hamlet and I played the guy who hides behind the curtain when hamlet comes in and hamlet stabs him through the curtain. When my baby sister, Sarah, saw me "die", she cried. David played Hamlet and Wendy played Hamlet's mother. I held Sarah after the play and she felt better.