entertainment

this isn't really chronological so much as something that was pretty constant for my first 8 years of life. 

i used to look at my fingers a lot. hold one up and close my eyes one at a time and watch it move back and forth when the view changed. i did it with other things in the room too. 

and i used to notice the floaters in my eyes a lot more too. i would watch them float down in front of my eye and then look up to move them back up and let them float down again.

satellite

our house in orem had a huge satellite dish in the back yard, like huge. the kind you pickup messages from aliens from, or watch conference on at the stake center. 

we didn't get basic cable channels but we got a lot of foreign channels. and there was a fence around it where our future dog would live. 

there was also a huge tree in the backyard when we moved in, but we had to have it taken out because it was old and diseased. this was sad for me because i had always wanted a big tree in my yard that i could have a tree house or a swing on. 

either that our cable tv. 

sharon elementary

i should probably say something about my first elementary school. 

it was disgusting. at least thats what i thought. there was only one bathroom that was alright. i felt like it was old and falling apart. and that everywhere smelled bad and was unorganized and was just all really gross. 

according to jon this is a really weird thing for a kid to think

and according to my mom my school was a fine place. 

the lunchroom tables could fold up into the walls though, that was pretty cool. 

science

in first grade we moved from class to class for science and art and music and PE. and did english and math and things like that with our own teacher. 

i was fine with my own teacher, but when it was time to go to science class i was not fine. 

the science teacher was mrs. christiansen. 

her room was hot

her room was very unorganized

and she weighed about 300 pounds.

i was terrified of her. and i never knew what was going on in science class. there were never clear directions on how to do things, and we would start one project without finishing the other. 

everyday i would cry and cry in that class. it is funny to think about it now because i think, well obviously i would cry, i was a tiny kid(a kindergartener) and i had no idea what was going on and my teacher was scary. 

but at that time i didn't think of myself as a little kid, and i didn't like crying, but i couldn't help it. i knew i shouldn't be crying, none of the other kids did. 

one science experiment i remember was seeing how many drops of water we could put on a penny, before the surface tension broke. a kid in my class (jordan?) kept putting drops of water in his mouth even though he wasn't supposed to. and that made me upset and so i was crying and my teacher (who was at least 10 times bigger than me i swear, she was probably 6'10) asked what was wrong and i said i was hot. so she put the fan on me (she was probably a nice lady). i wasn't really hot though, just embarassed that i was crying. 

finally my mom told me that i couldn't cry at school anymore. and to just say a prayer before science class so everything would be alright. 

i did.

and it was. 

and i haven't cried in science class since.  (not even dr. woodfields chemistry class, although he would probably consider it a triumph)

kindergarten

i went to kindergarten for one week. i already knew how to read (with the help of some hep cats) and so i was a little bit bored. 

one day, just as we were starting an art project (gluing a piece of string to a paper balloon) someone came and got me and took me into a room. the room had lots of posters about divorce and about fighting parents and child abuse. i am guessing it was the counselors office. 

they asked me a bunch of questions about letters and what they said. the letters they were showing me were on this printout with lots of other words on it, instead of just a card with the letter Aa. so every time the counselor asked me "and what does this say" i said "i don't know" because i couldn't read what the small words on the page said. apparently they told my mom that i wasn't reading at as high of level as they expected, but somehow she must of convinced them that i did indeed know what the letter A said and so they moved me up to 1st grade. 

only no one explained all this to me. 

one day i was in kindergarten, singing songs and talking about the weather with my teacher (who had to be at least 80! ask my brother he had her the next year) and the next day i was in a big classroom full of kids and i had my own desk and "tote" under it and instead of my nice grandma-ish teacher mrs. larsen i had a poofy curly white blonde scary teacher ms. liligran. 

she really liked bears. 

the first few weeks were a bit traumatic for me. 

hep cat

there you go

some hep cats