April 6, 2000
(I originally started writing this entry on the day my Dad passed away. Time to polish it off. On the plus side, it does give me some ready material to work with.)
I was rummaging in the office for something last month when I stumbled upon this:
This
is a book my mother bought for me way back in 1969, when I started out in Kindergarten.
It has 2 facing pages plus a pocket for each grade, from K up to 12. Looks dated,
doesn't it? I brought it in to work and scanned a few snippets of my past life.
The
year was 1969; Neil Armstrong had walked on the moon, and yours truly was entering
school for the first time, Kindergarten at Gander Academy, Gander Newfoundland.
I was 5 1/2 years old, weighing 40 pounds and measuring a mighty 3 feet, 8 inches.
See how cute I was? God, 31 years can be moider on a person! :-) Check out the class photo. Can you pick me out? I'll give you a hint; I'm the only one not smiling. Back row, second from the left of the picture under the 7. Happy looking camper, wasn't I? I attended Gander Academy from 1969 - 1971, when we packed our steamer trunks and shipped ourselves off to Bermuda.
I
went to 2 schools in Bermuda, Eliot School and Southampton Glebe. That's the
Eliot School crest you see to the left. Bermuda followed the English system
of education; instead of grades they had primary and standard levels. Kindergarten
and grade one were primary one and two; grade two onwards were standard one
etc. That's my standard one report card to the right. Can't get much better
than that! My scholastic career went downhill from there, I'm sure. Talk about
setting the bar high - yikes! It was thanks to this report card that I was skipped
a grade/standard one week into the next school year at Southampton Glebe. Hindsight
tells me that was a mistake and only compounded the problems associated with
always being the new kid. A story for another time.
That's as far as I got on the 13th. Time to get the creative juices flowing again. Hmm, where did I save all those scans? <time passing> Ah, here they are. Carrying on. . .
After 2 years in Bermuda ("I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas") we were posted to Winnipeg, Manitoba for 2 years. Talk about extremes! (Speaking of Christmas in Bermuda, did you know that they imported Christmas trees from Nova Scotia annually?)
That's Grade 5. Don't you love that great fashion sense that designers had back
in the 70s? Scarier thing is that a lot of those clothes are in style again.
(Eek!) Have you found me yet? Remember, I'm a year younger than my classmates,
so I'm not as tall as them. Think brown shirt. Yes, middle row, second from
your right. (Eek again!)
Every year, the city of Winnipeg held the Festival De Voyageur at the same time of year as Quebec City holds their Carnivale. They would get get local schools to organize activities and award ribbons to the best whatevers. The first place ribbon was for an ice sculpture that officially was done by a classmate and me but in reality was 90% his work. My 10% was that I showed up. I'll be damned if I recall what the third place ribbon was for. Winnipeg wasn't the best life experience for me; something about being beaten up and picked on by the twats in my class might have had something to do with it. It wasn't all bad though. I do remember being on my school's grade 5 curling rink and competing in a city wide combined grade 5/6 bonspiel. We were the last of the grade 5s to be eliminated, in the quarter- or semi-finals. Silly hindsight tells me I should have picked up the game full time from then, 'cause I was pretty good. (Must be the pedigree - Dad made it to the Newfoundland finals one year with the rink he curled on.)
Grades
7 and 8 were spent at Alta Vista Public School in Ottawa. That's grade 8 there.
Webhead trivia time. Front row, first person from the left is now a moderately
famous (to the html crowd at least) freelance
web designer grrl, Heather, who once had her picture in Esquire magazine
as part of a geek grrl pictorial. It's a small world. I hung out with a small
group of friends which included Heather, Kathryn (back row, 4th from right)
Chak (middle row, far right) and Andrew (middle row, 4th from right, pinching
sides of girl in front of him.) Memory that springs to mind of that time was
being outside at lunch in the middle of winter, bundled up like Michelin men,
playing atop 10 foot high hills of snow in the school yars made by the snowplows.
We were engaged in a form of King Of The Hill, and I distinctly remember Heather
tossing me off the top of a snowmound, landing on my back and looking up at
her staring down at me, defying me to try to dislodge her from the summit.
Heather? If you're reading this, my posting that class picture is my revenge. :-) (kidding! kidding!)
Btw, pick me out of the picture yet? Middle row, third over from the teacher, looking enthused as usual.
After a short tour of duty in London (Ontario, not England) we moved to St. Catharines, where I completed my high school education. Warning! Geeky early 80s teenager alert! Avert your children's eyes!
Aren't
I the sexiest 15 year old you've ever seen? No wonder the girls flocked to me
in droves, until I woke up in the morning. The sweat shirt says University
Tuktoyaktuk (Tuk U).
I picked it up on my first trip to the Yukon. I was such a rebel... There isn't
actually a real university there; the sweatshirt was just a wacky North Of 60
parody of us outsiders. 2 years later, I looked like that -> What's up with
the hair wings, dude? For those of you who don't know the signifigance, the
poppy is worn around Remembrance Day, November 11th, in honour of those
who made the supreme sacrifice in wartime. I'm pretty sure the practice is followed
south of the border for Veteran's Day. Do you wear yours come November? If not,
you should take a moment and think about what it represents.
Ooh, got all serious and preachy there for a second. Anyway, there's an abbreviated tour of my childhood, as kept locked away in the faded pages of the School Records. Now let's never speak of them again, and please let me burn some of those god awful school pictures!