(Kindergarten was not required when I started school, so I started first grade about the time I turned 5 years old.)

• My first grade teacher was Mrs. Grubbs. She was an older, grandmotherly-type lady, but with a very stern expression on her face at all times. (Ok, she was mean-looking.)

• During the first week of first grade I got sent out to stand in the hall for calling her Mrs. Grubby to another kid. (Snitch!)

• Also during my first week, Mrs. Grubbs took me to the classroom next door and introduced me to the teacher in there, Mrs. Bouland. Mrs. Grubbs explained that I was actually supposed to be in that class, but that I had been put in hers by mistake. They tried to coax me into changing, but I refused. Number one, I was afraid that my mom would be very upset with me if she came looking for me and I wasn’t where she’d left me. And two, Mrs. Grubbs’ classroom was at the very end of the hall, right next to the doors leading to the playground to be exact.

• We used to get those 6 ounce bottles of coke during recess. They were so cool!

• Our room had one of those little sinks for washing hands at every turn. Also cool!

• One time, of many, I was made to stand with my nose in the corner for acting up. Lockers lined the back wall and adjoined a long row of windows, making up the only free corner in the room. I went home that day very excited and proud that I’d had to stand in the corner, because I got to watch the ponies in the field across the street the whole time. I wish I’d kept it to myself, though. My second punishment was much worse.

• Becky W. got off the seesaw we were on and let me fall from the sky.

• Mrs. Grubbs had given us mimeographed alphabet pages to color. There was one letter on a page with a picture of something starting with that letter on it. We got one page a day until we finished the whole alphabet. I remember being right in the middle of coloring the letter C when I got sick and threw up. My mom had to come and get me and I was crying because I didn’t get to finish coloring my corn.