Ok, so, where I left off was just before I started school, about age 3-4. Here is where I’ll start for this one.

To continue; about age four, my twin sister and I were put in a Montessori Program to start our education. We then moved to where we would spend most of the rest of our learning years, K-12; to 6211 E. Hilldale Rd. Port Orchard, WA 98366. That is where I lived most of my young life, all through school. We learned how to roller-skate, to ride horses, to train horses, to garden, take care of cats, dogs, take out the trash, wash the dishes, cook, clean, mend our own clothing, and a few other house hold type tasks. We took piano lessons when we were young girls for a year or two; when we were still relatively young, we played soccer for a season. When we were in second grade, we took a couple of extra-curricular program classes; one being a six or so week class on Spanish Culture; and the other was ballet lessons. When we were in fifth and sixth grades, we were in band and both took the flute. We also played girls basketball.

It was also during these years that my sister, mom and I took part in showing the horses that we owned in Horse Shows around the state. We rode in classes that demonstrated our ability to control the horse or at least maintain a certain amount of responsibility over the horse. Also, it demonstrated our ability to train a horse to follow vocal and other types of cues to do certain given tasks as a horse handler. My sister and myself did generally pretty well in these classes, and we had fun also. What’s not to like, after all, we earned many ribbons and trophies for our efforts.

In Junior High, we were still interested in many similar things, but we really started to diverge apart a bit form each other as we learned about many different areas of learning. Through the Exploring Secondary Electives Program, we could figure out what things we liked, I found that I liked cooking and art; music and wood shop, but metal shop and band, not so much…music as in singing was more like what I wanted to be involved in for myself. I also learned what types of classes I excelled in; such as English and writing and spelling; art and music; some types of science and basic types of math I did alright in. I also had a short involvement in school government also, and in many different ways. Not only did I run briefly for school office, but I also helped with others campaigns as well. Junior High is also when I started to have issue with my eczema on my feet and hands for the first time. I happened during Gym class but for some reason, I wasn’t allowed to go home, even though I could barely walk on my feet before they would hurt so bad that I’d about crumble under my own weight on my feet; the pressure from standing on my feet made the tiny blister-like red dots all over my feet feel like I was stepping on little needles; it really hurt.

Eighth and ninth grades were definitely growing years for me. And I don’t mean in height, I mean in knowledge and understanding. There are a great many things that I found out amongst all of my regular and extra-curricular studies; it was also the time that I started becoming very ’self-aware’ of many of my abilities and talents, skills and strengths; more so then most at my age. Some things I became interested in were the studies of the ancient Greek Gods and Goddesses, as well as the corresponding Roman Gods and Goddesses. Myths in general really fascinated me for some reason. Genealogy also did for quite some time while in my youth, and not just that of the Gods and Goddesses; my own as well. I found out through my Grandfather that according to him, we have a lineage of Welsh royal blood as well as Dutch royal blood. We also have Irish, French-Canadian, German, Scandinavian, and Blackfoot Indian heritages in our ancestry so it was very interesting to me; all of it. Something else that interested me in the ninth grade, was Drill Team. It is similar to Cheerleading or CheerSquad, but a little different, just subtle differences though. I suppose one could equate it to ‘Junior cheersquad’ since it was as ninth graders that we were involved in it, and it was only ninth graders that could at my Junior High. Some other things I was involved in were taking a class to be an office assistant; during a whole class period, I would be in the Attendance Office and doing all manner of tasks that the Office Secretaries asked me to do. Some of them being stuffing envelopes to be sent home to the parents of the students of the entire school, that was a big job. We had kids coming to go to school where I went all the way from Seattle; they had to take a ferry and what not just to get there everyday.

A program started just about the time I reached my ninth grade year was ‘behavior’ grades, where each grading period, you would receive a letter grade for how well you behaved each graded period. If you got good enough ‘behavior’ grades, you were allowed to carry what was called an ‘Honor Pass’ that let you out of class early if you had completed all of your class work and your teacher released you from class. I was able to do this quite often during that year. It was a lot of fun. Most of the time, I found myself in the library, or the main office of the school helping out in the mail room and other parts of the office. I even was called into the cooking class one time to show a younger student in the ESE cooking class how to make deviled eggs for their banquet where a group of students would invite another teacher from the staff to come and eat with them to sample their ‘menu’ of dishes and what not that they had learned to make that trimester (i.e. grading period); one group had fallen behind on what they were making so, the cooking teacher requested that I be sent to the classroom to help; of course, they had to track me down, because my schedule said I was supposed to be in one place, but I wasn’t there, I was in the Main office downstairs. I was filing papers for the Secretary. Alphabetizing was one of the many things I was pretty good at during this time of my schooling. I also loved being within earshot of the staff talking about who was in trouble and for what, because that usually meant that I would be delivering their detention notice during my TA class, which right around lunch time, so sometimes, I would have to go locate a student at lunch; with their friends. It was kind of gratifying at times to deliver such ‘favorable’ news to certain individuals. The blatant rule-breakers who always tried to blame others for their mis-deeds are the ones I’m talking about. But anyway; in one of my math classes, I also served as a door monitor, and was really good at it. I was the one who marked down all of the late comers to class because of chatting at their lockers or just other means of wasting time. One of my many pet peeves.

Those are some of my memories from my youth and early teen years. I will illustrate the rest of my teen years and pre-adolescence next time. See ya all then; and thanks for reading.