{Our Tooth Fairy Keeps Forgetting Her Pants}

Memo

From: E.

To:  Tooth Fairy

Re:  What the heck?




This memo is to serve as your official notification that I will be filing a formal complaint with your supervisor regarding our complete dissatisfaction with your performance as our family's Tooth Fairy.

On more than one occasion you have demonstrated behavior that leads me to believe that you would be better suited for a different field of employment.  Such behaviors include an alarmingly high rate of absenteeism (my son waited three days for your last pick up), disregarding your obligation for personal written correspondence with my children (you have yet to answer my son's letter requesting information on what you do with all of those teeth - I think he finds it a little disturbing) and below market value pricing for my children's cavity free teeth.  One of my son's classmates is currently being compensated at the rate of $10 per tooth, and my sister informs me that her Tooth Fairy leaves fancy gold dollars with each visit.  We will be filing a separate complaint with the EEOC and will be requesting all back pay plus fines paid in full as soon as possible.

I do not have the extra time nor am I willing to assume responsibility any longer for your carelessness.  I will no longer attempt to convince my disappointed children that their tooth money has fallen behind the bed, worked its way into the pillowcase, or become tangled in the sheets.  I will no longer pen hastily written letters with my left hand to disguise my handwriting in hopes of protecting your professional reputation.  I will no longer store two mouths worth of teeth in my underwear drawer because you have failed to remove them as per your job description.  (Quite frankly it's just a little gross.)

As my children's advocate in this matter, I can no longer accept your irresponsible behavior nor will I subject them to the neglect and obvious careless regard that you have for their feelings.  I will be requesting a replacement fairy as soon as possible, and can only hope that you pursue a career that does not involve destroying childhood memories.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that your replacement is more responsible and thorough than you have been.


ps-
I will be forwarding my complaint to the Easter Bunny, Santa's Workshop and The Great Pumpkin.

{Do These Pants Make Me Look Fat?}

When I was in the seventh grade I was on the school dance team.  I use the term "dance" as loosely as possible here.  Let's just put it this way - if 1987's idea of "going viral" had less to do with quarantine and more to do with laughing at the super uncool behavior of people that you do not know - YouTube would've been all over us.

Luckily for my sisters, this hip-shaking, streamer-twirling, jazz-hands extravaganza lives on thanks to the awesome invention of home video.  Mostly, I'm forced to watch these videos at holiday gatherings- along with the videos of our band performances and one of me being interviewed by a local television program, also circa 1987-permed-hair.   (I'd worked with a local artist on completing a piece of "wearable art" and it was being displayed in one of her shows.  Apparently this was big news in Lockwood, Montana.  My  adventure in "wearable art" is a totally different post all together.)  I have endured many hours of pretending that I am not totally embarrassed that I ever thought it was a good idea to wear a black leotard, footless leggings and red leg warmers... in public... while dancing to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel."  (If I had any idea how to get the video tape stuff onto the internet, I would totally post this for you.  I'm a big believer in funny stuff... even if it's at my own expense.)

In those brief viewing moments when I actually open my eyes to see if my sisters have suffocated because they chose mocking laughter over oxygen, I am struck with something about myself.  I was skinny.  Not thin.  Skinny.  I seriously had no idea at all about this.  I probably should've clued into this when the spandex shorts I wore for gym class were baggy, but I guess it's not until you fill out your spandex that you realize what that meant.

I only had one moment in my life (prior to adulthood) that I ever really even thought about my body.  I was 12 and at a water park with our church youth group, and thus, wearing a swimsuit.  I remember looking at myself and then saying to my dad "I have a fat stomach".  (I did not have a fat stomach.  I weighed like 95 pounds or something, but my stomach has never been totally flat. It's always had a bit of curve to it... like everything else on my body- even at 95 pounds.)  My dad looked at me and said "You don't have a fat stomach.  All girls have stomachs like that.  God made girls to have stomachs like that."  (I have since learned that this is a total lie.  Not all girls have stomachs like this, but I go with "spirit of the law" on this one and so I'm ok with it.)

I thought about those two seconds with my dad yesterday as my daughter stepped off the scale at the doctor's office.  The nurse announced her weight, and then my daughter looked at me.  She looked like how you feel when you are waiting to find out if you passed your driver's license test.  She has never looked at me that way before, and I'm not gonna lie - I was pretty sure it was one of those parenting moments that if you get wrong, will last until your children can tell their therapist about it. I thought of my dad and how differently I would've seen myself for the rest of my life if he would've even jokingly agreed with me.  I thought of my dad and how he could have turned me into a different person with two sentences... and then because I am super witty and good with words I came up with ... "Perfect".  That's what I said to her.  "Perfect".  I even said it really fast so that it would sound like I was not totally concerned about causing her to have an eating disorder or something.

I will always be sad when I think of her looking at me from that scale, but I'm pretty sure that this was a way bigger deal for me than for her... and if that's true, then I think I did my job.

My pants are always with me.

When I was a little girl one of my favorite songs was "Convoy" by C.W. McCall.  (In case you are unfamiliar with the great American poet C.W. McCall the first verse of the song goes a little something like this... 

"Was the dark of the moon, on the sixth of June 
In a Kenworth, pullin' logs 
Cabover Pete with a reefer on 
And a Jimmy haulin' hogs 
We 'as headin' fer bear on I-One-Oh 
'Bout a mile outta Shaky-Town 
I sez Pig-Pen, this here's the Rubber Duck 
An' I'm about to put the hammer on down".)

What 7 year old girl would not be drawn in by the romance of a thousand social malcontent rebel truckers engaged in an act of impromptu civil disobedience?  I suspect my love of all things big-rig stemmed from the fact that we actually had a CB in our van... and our parents had "handles" (which were the 1970s CB equivalent of screen names. My dad was "the Electric Chair" - not a reference to a love of capital punishment, but rather to the very heavy electric wheelchair that acted as his legs.  My mom also had a handle, but... unlike my dad is still alive and people that know her might have a hard time picturing her sending a shout out over the air waves, so I will keep it to myself.)  My sisters and I would put on CW's record (yep - a real life record) and dance with abandon around our single wide.  It was very modern.  We also choreographed a lovely Broadway number to "Fiddler on the Roof" as well as a funky disco piece to "Disco Mickey Mouse".  You've got nothin' on the trailer park Mia Michaels.

I am totally good with having a trailer park childhood.  I learned a lot of stuff there.  For instance...

• Numbers are acceptable names for children.  One of our little trailer park friends was named "Seven".  I know what you're thinking - "Sad.  They ran out of names by their seventh child".  No.  As I recall, he was child number 2.  I just remember that he was slightly dirty all the time, and once while he was doing some excavation work in his front yard, (he was digging a big hole - looking for pirate treasure no doubt), accidentally dug his shovel of death into my sister's forehead.  (At least I think it was an accident).  His mom,  Toni came running down the street carrying my limp sister, covered in her blood and yelling for my father.  I will never forget how her blood was everywhere.  I thought she was dead.  Turned out she just needed a few stitches. ( I was a bit of a dramatic child.)
• Goats are acceptable domestic pets.  There was a woman that lived near us that we called "the Goat Lady".  Unlike "Seven", this is self explanatory.  She had goats just a roamin' all around her trailer.  This is how I know what "goat stink" smells like, and the primary reason I will not eat the stinky goat cheese, I think.  I would go in her kitchen and she would give me Tang.  I had never had that space-aged-powdery-elixir before and ever after felt quite ill-used that my parents made me drink stupid old real orange juice.  
• If there is a field next to your trailer park... and it has a fence... and a "no trespassing" sign... you are not welcome there.  Furthermore, there's a pretty good chance that you will find yourself, literally running for your life from Cujo's slightly bigger, uglier and meaner brother.  He might also have an ironic name, like Fluffy, because even vicious dog owners can have a sense of humor.  The lesson here ?  Survival of the fittest.  In other words - you don't have to outrun the dog, you only have to outrun the kid next to you.  (Actually, I learned this from an experience that my sister had (the same one with the shovel injury - she had a rough childhood).  It was definitely not funny, but thankfully she was the skinniest and the fastest of the trespassers, and so was spared a lengthy hospital stay complete with, like one million stitches and full length body casts.)  Seriously. 

  I knew nothing of ugly trailer park stereotypes.  I knew nothing of children wandering around in moon boots and diapers.  I knew nothing of dirty white tank tops and pants that covered only half of the wearer's "real estate".  I knew nothing of eating squirrels or any other sundry rondenty kinds of animals.  (Although I did eat my fair share of tuna casserole covered in Lays potato chips.)  We were just normal families, in what we considered a normal neighborhood, living normal American lives.  My parents worked hard, and eventually left the trailer park and built a home (without wheels) and did the American dream.

So... I was more than a little conflicted when I drove up to a trailer park where I was to leave my daughter for a birthday party being held by one of her school friends - and I didn't get any warm feelings of nostalgia.  I just felt panic.  The "yards" were dirty and full of rusty things... things that I didn't know could even rust.  The air smelled like the smell you smell when you eat in a restaurant that has a Keno establishment/bar hidden in the back.  The inside of the trailer was adorned with crosses and crucifixes (to ward off vampires I guess) and pictures of Jesus with sheep... and  a picture of an old man praying over his bread and soup.  The same picture that hung above the table in the trailer where I grew up (and every place we lived after that.)  We called him "Old Man, Bread and Soup" (I know original) and teased my mother about that picture all the time.

I couldn't help but smile faintly around my fear and then breathe a sigh of relief when I found out that one of the other moms from school was staying with our children.  I guess that, in the end, there really is no going home, but there's also no getting away from home either.  Especially if that home has wheels - like a trailer, or a big rig truck. 

ps- the youtube version of "Convoy" in the link is not the original version - I thought it was funny that someone else liked it enough to remake it.  Rad.

 

Wipe the dust off your pants.

When I was a little girl we used to sing this song in Sunday School called "Oh What Do You Do In The Summertime?  It went a little something like this:  "Oh, what do you do in the summertime?  When all the world is green?  Do you march in parades, or drink lemonade, or count every star in the sky?  Is that what you do?  So do I."  I'm not sure who wrote this particular song but clearly they did not consult me or my sisters regarding the lyrics.  If they had the song would be a little less Twain  and a whole lot more Steinbeck.

My father, although a really pleasant man, did not view vacation time as a time to laze about counting stars and such nonsense.  Vacation time to him meant one thing and one thing only.  Free labor.  Every summer he had some kind of very extensive, very exhausting project that needed completing.  One year, when I was about 11 he wanted to landscape our "yard".  (It wasn't the kind of yard that we have here in Oregon.  The houses in Oregon are close enough together that if you need to borrow a cup of sugar from your neighbor you just open your window, reach into their kitchen and get it yourself.  In Montana, the yards are big enough to let everybody walk around naked with the shades up and not have to worry that you're gonna end up on "the YouTube" -as I like to refer to it.)  Anyway.  My dad's idea of a landscaping project was to line the entire perimeter of our  property with a three foot wide border of broken brick.  Maybe brick is supposed to have protective powers - ward off the evil eye or whatever and Dad thought that by surrounding the house he was keeping us all safe.  Probably he just liked the color contrast- he was an artist. Regardless, that brick wasn't going to break, haul and spread itself.

If you've ever seen pictures of an old school chain gain where the men are breaking a big pile of rocks, then you've got a pretty good idea of how my sisters and I spent the summer of 1985.  Just swap out the big sweaty men with big hammers for little sweaty girls with little hammers... and gallon size buckets - the kind cheap ice cream comes in.  Then, add in all of the neighborhood kids that found out that our dad would "pay" them with a huge soda from the Maverick Convenience Store and Truck Stop at the end of the day and so decided to volunteer for service on the Ecker and Daughters Demo Crew. (Where was Amnesty International then I ask you.)  Seriously, all I remember is a bunch of kids running willy-nilly around huge piles of brick, sweating profusely in the very hot Montana sun and swinging hammers left and right.  Luckily for my dad it was "back in the day"- which basically means that he didn't have to worry about little trifling things like sunscreen or protective eye wear or closed toe shoes.  Maximum productivity with minimal overhead.

I started thinking about this particular summer vacation as, (during this winter vacation), I was outside, alone, using my bark dust rake to break down and clear away the slushy/snowy/icy furrows that are giving my street an appearance similar to how I imagine the border lands between Pakistan and... whoever borders Pakistan.  I thought about how if I had been my dad I would not be the one doing the raking.  If I were my dad, I would've organized my three children into a work party and let them learn the benefits of some good, hard, physical labor.  I would've recruited their friends.  I would've had a big work plan.  But, in actuality, that's just... so hard.  It's so hard to listen to the complaining.  It's so hard to get them to complete their assigned tasks.  It's so hard to stop my three year old from converting his broom into some kind of Samurai Warrior's weapon and launching an attack on anyone within strike range.

 It's so much easier to put my kids in front of a computer game and just do the work myself.  I want so much for my kids to be hard workers like my mom (who one day, early on in her time working for UPS, loaded package cars all night, went home and literally had a baby), or my grandfather, the carpenter, who dug the basement of my father's childhood home - by hand.  (One of the other summer projects I got to do was install a sprinkler system with him.  I got to do the "by hand" digging that time. Big fun.)  But, when it comes down to giving my kids an opportunity to learn the principle, I shelve the "teaching moment" in favor of the more efficient "get the heck out of my way so that I can get this done already moment".

I never realized, as I was hauling that brick, that my dad had a lot of other options for getting that work done- most of which would've been easier on him than transporting and supervising a baseball team's worth of kids, armed with hammers and very loud voices around in a van with no seat belts, (which meant freedom of movement) very limited air conditioning and vinyl seats.  I never realized as I was working and no doubt, fighting with my sisters that my dad had to endure not only the labor, but the laborers. I never realized as I was savoring my Orange Crush at the end of each day, that it was such hard work to teach kids how to work hard.

You might think that I hated those days.  I did not.  My vacations are full of good memories of a father that spent time with us, that made us finish what we started, that had a plan for his children.  The plan wasn't always fun.  Now I know that it wasn't fun for him either.  But sometimes what's needed in a child's life - and in a parent's, isn't vacations full of parade marching or star counting or computer playing.  What's needed is a vacation full of a pile of bricks... or a road full of snow.

There's a Rock Star Living in my Pants

Last night I went to the Weezer concert with my husband. (It was a birthday present. I bought the tickets a really long time ago and I kept it a secret - which I cannot believe.  I was very proud that I kept my big mouth shut.  It's rare.)  Weezer was great, but the opening bands (there were two)... not so much.  However, the first group - who was clearly just thrilled to be there- did have passion.  We'll call the keyboardist - Crack Addict Schroeder.  I've never seen someone play the piano with every part of his body (figuratively, obviously) - and he played a mean tambourine as well.  If it had been a cow bell I would've asked for his autograph. Alas...

I've been to 3 other concerts in my life.  They were :

1.  The Jets in 1985ish at the Metro Arena in Billings MT.  If you do not remember The Jets I am sorry for you.  Essentially they were the Polynesian Osmonds, except there was more than one girl and none of them wore purple socks.  At their core though, they were a singin' Mormon family looking to make a buck.  My parents ushered at the Metro Arena along with other people from our church as a fundraiser and it was through this awesome connection that my sister and I actually got to meet the Jets.  (I know.)  We also got to be in the very front of the crowd... right in front of the barrier ...between the audience and the band.  This is great until a coven of screaming tweens begin a relentless march toward said barrier hoping that one of those beautiful Jet boys would pull them on stage and ask them to join the band, or maybe marry them, or both.  Totally reasonable. In, what I realize now was a Concert Rookie mistake, I stretched my ribcage, shoulders,neck (and finally), chin up to make it easier breathe.  The girls around me, who clearly saw me as a threat to their imminent proposals of marriage, (I was pretty hot in my turquiose stirrup pants) and also considered my 75 pound body an acceptable casualty, sucked up the 1/4 inch of space I gave up when I stretched out and I literally couldn't move even one muscle.  You try to breathe all stretched out like that.  Go ahead.  It's no good.  My sister (in a similar predicament) and I ended up getting hauled over the barrier by the security guards because "Jealous Mob Squishes Girls To Death at Polynesian Osmonds Concert" was not a headline they wanted to see in the Billings Gazette.

2.  Debbie Gibson in 1988ish at the California State Fair -  All I have to say about this one is that if you start off as Debbie, you finish up as Debbie.  I'm sorry, but you don't get to decide that if you change your name to "Deborah" then people will forget you sang "Electric Youth" and "Only in My Dreams" and hire you as a dramatic actress.  All things have their price and teenage fame's is this:  when your fans grow up, you get sent to the Goodwill with their Huffy 10 speed and their phone shaped like a pair of lips- (I got one of these for my 14th birthday and I still freakin' love that thing - wherever it is).  Like every other embarassing part of childhood, you and your smelly "Electric Youth" perfume (which I also owned and unfortunately wore) will be grown out of and not welcomed back... with one exception - Marky Mark, who lost the Funky Bunch, found his shirt,  and is now legitimately known as and gets work as  - Mark Walberg.  (Miley Cyrus - you've been warned.)

3.  Barry Manilow, last year with my mom and sister in Portland Oregon - I do own a shirt that says Barry Fanilow, and sometimes I wish that my name was Lola.  Nothing is better than dancing without shame to Barry with those you love.  By the way, Barry can still sing it up people, but I do wonder how he sings so loud without actually moving his mouth.  Not a plastic surgery success story is all I'm saying.

Which brings me back to Weezer 2008 Portland Oregon.  A couple of things I learned last night: Firstly, Don't show up to a concert on time unless you want to watch lame opening acts and sound checks.  

Secondly, I saw way too many women over 30 in pigtails.  All I can say about this is "STOP  IT." It does not make you look young and cool and edgey.  It makes you look... something else.

Thirdly, I like bass players.  They are the coolest.  They have really good rhythm and they look like they could care less about where they are as long as they can take a split stance and pound out a funky riff.

Fourth, I am too old to stand on the floor and jump up and down to "Undone - the Sweater Song".  (I knew this ahead of time actually and so purchased actual seats.  Sad).

One thing I know for sure though, in my next life - Rock Star.  As for this life - Rock Star in my mind, and of course, my pants.

I told you not to wear those pants today

There are certain of life's experiences that are great equalizers.  Death, giving birth (I figured this one out really quickly), leaving a restroom with your skirt tucked into your unders.  There is also - elementary school picture day.  A day when all children, regardless of circumstance, have the opportunity to look equally bad.

Take my niece,  for example.  Anyone that has met my sister's children knows that they are (as she likes to say) really, really, ridiculously good looking.  This particular niece has curly hair.  Nice ringletty curly hair.  The kind of curly hair that I, throughout much of my adolescense tried to achieve with bad perms and lots of mousse (that's right- mousse... and hairspray.)  It wasn't good.  Anyway, she's got the curly hair and my sister, (who is meticulous about the grooming of her children ) had it all cute and hippy-chic looking when she walked out the door on picture day.  Unfortunately-before making it to the photographer, my niece met with an over zealous picture-helper-volunteer-mom armed with a black Goody comb who, (again unfortunately) was not acquainted with "hippy-chic" nor with what happens to curly hair when you comb it.  She must've realized her mistake, and as a remedy to the frizzy mess perching a top my niece's head, decided to tuck the whole mess behind her ears.  Pretty.

A similar experience happened with  my sister's son last year  (different sister). His picture- helper- volunteer -mom succeeded in combing his bangs straight down, flat against his forehead  into a style vaguely resembling a blonde swim cap.  My sister now writes on the picture order form - "DO NOT COMB MY CHILD'S HAIR" - in her own blood probably.  I don't know if she's asked them to refrain from giving her sons their own black Goody combs though.  (She has twins).  Personally, I would love to see a picture of one of those kids after 30 minutes standing in line, crammed up against 50 other 1st grade boys also armed with hard plastic combs- each comb with a degree of bendyness perfect for flicking your neighbor in the back of the head, and teeth close enough together, that when turned just right, gets good and stuck in the bangs.  That picture, my friends, would be a keeper.

Personally, I like the elementary school pictures that go a little awry.  Like when my sister (the one with the twins) accessorized her fancy picture dress with the handmade, multi-colored, wooden bead necklace that she snuck out of the house in her backpack.  It's one of my favorite images of her.  It tells a lot more about who she was when she was as a child than if that picture had turned out "perfect".  Hopefully, next week when picture day at our school roles around, my kids will come up with something that, even if it's not going to make it in the Holiday add for Gap Kids, will at least make me laugh.

Did Donna Martin wear pants to her graduation?

 In the house I just moved to, there is no cable television.  In fact, there was an antenna on the roof, until we asked that it be removed.  My bad.  I guess that that thing actually had a purpose.  Now, my family enjoys 5 semi-clear channels (12, 10, 8,6 and 2), and these thanks only to some fancy electrical tape/hanger contraption attached to the TV antenna (which is now a bendy cable coming out of the back of the TV and not the "rabbit ears" on top like back in the day.)  Originally, I went with, (what else?) aluminum foil, but apparently my husband is into the kinetic sculpture look we've got going on now.

The upshot of all of this is that I have yet to see the new 90210.  I know.  I am more than a little ambiguous about the revival of television shows from my youth.  It feels like Corporate America snatched my teenage memories from the box with my letterman jacket and yearbooks, shook off the dust and is now trying to sell them back to me as "new and improved".  They even used the original theme song in a transparent attempt to get it stuck in my head like some kind of clandestine special ops torture technique.  Duh duh duh duh, da duh duh duh - clap clap ... (that's the beginning of the song, by the way - apparently instrumentals don't translate into print very well.)  

I can't imagine what plot lines have been left unexplored for those kids from Beverly...Hills that is.  (Oops, wrong show.)  If I were a writer for this "new" series I would totally steal lines from the old show - word for word- and see if anyone noticed.  I for one, would love to see one of the new characters graduate, with the accompanying dialogue "Donna Martin graduates".  This may be one of my favorite TV lines ever.  I'm not sure why, but it makes my sisters and me laugh everytime we say it.  ("Me" not "I" right?)  Really, why throw out all that compelling drama when it could be reused and recycled.  Now that's what I call corporate responsibility.

The show I really wish they'd bring back is "The Wonder Years".  I loved that show.  I always wanted Kevin and Winnie to fall in love and get married.  (I was 14 and apparently more romantic than I am now.)  Except, I would still want Kevin and Winnie to fall in love and get married.  And that's what the series would be - happy, married, children, knowing that they never loved anyone else or even wanted to love anyone else.  No one would cheat on anyone.  No one would have a midlife crisis.  No one would get cancer or male pattern baldness.  No one would want Botox.  They would live together, get old together, and die together asleep in their bed, as flashbacks from their youth played on the screen.  That would be the series finale, obviously.  And at the very end of the credits it would read "Donna Martin graduates" and I would laugh... undoubtedly all alone. 

New pants can be uncomfortable

Today was Avery's first day at her new school - and as I learned yesterday, her teacher and her class moved up together from the 2nd grade. This means that Avery was the only new girl in her class - everyone knew everyone except her. Do you hear my panic people? Good, because there's nothing like a little mass panic to drive your point home.

I was very worried. But in vain... because there was a very nice girl named Bailey who saw Avery when we walked in, came right on up and said "do you want to sit by me?" Just like that, no biggie, no nothing, just friends just because. Adults do not do this. Adults do not befriend someone unless they know something about them first - we need a friend resume. We need to have similarities, we need to have commonality, we need to have a connection. The thing is, we really don't - we just need to be kind, like Bailey.

Maybe she was new once too and remembered what that felt like, maybe not. Maybe her mom told her to be nice to any new kids in her class today, maybe not. Maybe she liked Avery's smile and freckles, maybe not. But it doesn't really matter, she did right.

And so... I am inventing : "the Bailey Prize" to be awarded to those whose acts of kindness effect (or affect - I can never remember) my life - and the first recipient? Bailey.

No pants today little missy

Sentimental Rant...

I went shopping for "first day of school" clothes with my kids today. Did we find anything? No we did not, but this blog is not about them, so that is the last you'll hear of them - I just needed a good starting sentence. This little outing, not unlike the one Mary Poppins took with Jane and Michael Banks when... oh no - I mean the one those little rat kids took with their dad where they caused a run on the bank and the police came and everything around them was thrown into chaos - yes that's the one - it got me thinking about the first day of school and how it seems so much more stressful dressing someone for their first day of school than it was actually going to the first day of school.

I was not allowed to wear pants to the first day of school. I think my parents hoped that my good grooming would divert the teacher's attention into overlooking the fact that I was a slightly bossy know-it-all who did not like to raise her hand and loved a good "death drop" from the monkey bars, dress or no.

My first day of kindergarten I wore a navy blue dress, knee socks (I'm picturing them in red)and Buster Brown shoes. I'm not sure if I liked the dress or not - quite frankly I should've been more concerned with the space between my two front teeth (seriously, you could've driven a semi through that thing) - but it never bothered me. I guess I figured that I was sufficiently armed with my Big Chief writing tablet (which I'm sure they no longer make, for obvious reasons, but I'd still like to have one), and various other sundry supplies and I was ready to learn... whatever it was I was going to learn.

The first day of going to school after we moved to California I wore jeans - I think my parents felt sorry for me and so let me out of the dress thing. They were acid washed - don't pretend like you didn't have any- and had , like, graffiti writing up one leg. Hot. Looking back I think I should've gone with a pair that had a zipper and bow on the back of the ankle - but those were hard to peg so...Luckily my mom had just permed my (short) hair and I still had the aforementioned space in between my teeth. Again, hot. I didn't even know enough to be scared. My school in Montana had 250 kids k-8, my school in California : 1800 kids 7-8th. By the end of the day, I sat down in the quad and cried right on my acid washed jeans. The next day I begged my parents to let me stay home, but they didn't, and it got better. And better. And better. And then it was really good...and I was ready to learn...whatever I was going to learn.

The first day of my Junior year (oddly, I don't remember what I wore when I was a Senior)- I wore a light blue kiltish thing with a red turtle neck. Sadly, I finished the look with cream tights and brown shoes of questionable styling. (Oh, 1992 - where have you gone?) There is a picture of me standing in front of my mom's car eating an apple - she was dropping me off at my boyfriend's house so that I could ride to school with him (and my sister, and his brother, and anyone else we could fit in the car probably) and even though I didn't have a Big Chief tablet, I still look like I am ready for...whatever I was going to learn, and I still didn't know enough to even worry.

So it comes down to this, after 13 first days of school and even though I said I wouldn't mention them again - I wish this for my little leaders of the Jane and Michael Banks fan club - I hope my kids never know enough to be scared and are always ready for... whatever they are going to learn. I'm sure I would be if only I could still fit into those tight ankle zipper jeans.