Life Science

Life Science. Oh how I adored Life Science. I was a seventh grader at T.W. Browne Jr. High and had Coach Rachel for my Life Science teacher. Now the mere fact that I can remember his name tells you something about him and his class. I loved nothing more than to study for his tests. I would spend hours in our front living room memorizing all the answers I would need to ace his tests. Then I would walk up and down the hilly streets of my neighborhood with my other best friend who coincidentally was named Susan, too. She was a year older and we both took our academics very seriously. Susan would faithfully quiz me time and time again over the material. I took great pride in always being the first one done and nine times out of ten making a perfect score. In fact, Mr. Rachel commented one time about how he had told his wife that he was going to make the test a little harder to see if he could beat me. He never was able to do it. I just took on the challenge. I was the Life Science champion. I also took great pleasure in putting together my insect collection. To this day I still remember that dragon flies belong to the Odonata family and grasshoppers to Othroptra. My other memory of this class was sitting next to Kathy Duff who was left handed and I was right handed. We were constantly bumping elbows. As smart as I was in test taking, it never occurred to me that Kathy and I should just switch places at our table to solve our problem. Two years later I would once again have Mr. Rachel for Honors Biology. It was here that the lyrics for "Put Your Hand in the Fin of the Shark From Biology" were crafted during our shark dissection.

Put your hand in the fin of the shark that swam the waters

Put your hand in the fin of the shark that swam the sea

Take a look at a shark and you can look at tuna differently

By putting your hand in the fin of the shark from Biology.

Every time I look at the gooey gook

I wanna tremble

Fake Fingernails

Fake fingernails. Oh how I loved fake fingernails. My own pitiful excuse for nails were usually bitten down to the quick. In fact it wasn't until the summer before my junior year of high school that I actually grew out my nails. I couldn't have been more proud or mortified when during my first day of typing Mrs. Tucker informed us that we all needed to cut our nails in order to type properly. But flash back a few years and let's continue the fake fingernail story. Each week I received $2.00 for my allowance. I would more times than not rush to M.E. Moses at Westcliff Mall and plunk down 50 cents on a set of fingernails. They would be applied with adhesive from a small tube included in the box. I would faithfully apply them and polish them and watch them pop off one by one. Now their lack of longevity never kept me from spending my next week's allowance on a new set. When I think what I could have done with the compounding interest of a weekly deposit on fingernails I'd be rich today!

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia. Don't you love the way it just rolls off your tongue? It seemed so exotic, so foreign, so I can't wait to make the vacant lot next door the place of my dreams. When I moved to Texas I was in sixth grade. The same sixth grade I was in when I left Florida. But the difference between the two was night and day. I was eleven going on twelve and everyone else was eleven going on sixteen. I hadn't been at my new school more than an hour or two when a boy from my class wrote me a note asking me to go steady with him. Now I really had very little knowledge of this whole steady thing, but my mother found it highly inappropriate and said no way. I always blamed this event as the kiss of death on my junior high/ high school love life. Basically all going steady meant in sixth grade was wearing some boys id bracelet. Once the word got out that my mom wouldn't let me go steady no one else ever asked. So what does all of this have to do with a magical place called Czechoslovakia? Well while others my age were falling madly in love and going steady, I was busy climbing to the top of the mountain next door to gather pea gravel to bring home for dinner. Or I was crushing chalk rock into fine powder to be baked for our weekly bread. Life in Czechoslovakia was hard and required constant attention. It was here that I met my soon to be new best friend Susan. Susan was overweight and to be honest I had not met many kids my age who were overweight. My first thought was that I did not want a fat friend. But want it or not we became fast friends and continued to be for several more years. Myself and the neighborhood kids all played in that vacant lot until they had the audacity to build a house in Czechoslovakia. By that time I was ready to move onto bigger and better things like plays and carnivals. But that's a whole other story. 

Moving to Texas

Moving to Texas. Once again the words, "We're moving," were mine to hear. As an Army brat I had spent the first eleven years of my life moving from one place to another. I had learned to say good bye to friends quite easily, however I was still reluctant to be the new girl at school once more.  Prior to this news we had taken a family vacation to Texas.  I had learned that in Dallas people did not ride on horseback or carry six shooters strapped to their waists. I had met a girl named Janet who was my aunt's neighbor.  She had entertained us with her rendition of, "These Boots Were Made for Walking."  I liked her right away. I had even been to Six Flags Theme park and learned a little about the six different flags that Texas had served under. Leaving Florida was harder than other moves.  I was older and had become best friends with Ann Marie.  I even had a crush on Mark Zinzer from school.  I loved my neighborhood and was looking forward to moving into seventh grade at my school.  Dad had just retired from the military and was ready to start a new career. My mother's sister, Aunt Joan, had lived in Texas for many years. Dad was hired by LTV, the company my Uncle Dick worked for. In just a matter of a few years my mother's entire family would move to Texas making it possible for me to get to know my grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins.

The Bat Cave

The Bat Cave. I was a huge Batman fan. I looked forward each week to the next episode. Stay tuned: "Same bat time, same bat channel." In fact I loved to recreate those daunting last minutes of each episode. Whether it was holding my breath as I tucked my head under a shirt full of Vick's vapor rub, or filling up my Mom's shower with as much steam as I could stand, my over active imagination was in high gear when it came to reinacting Batman episodes. But the most fun of all came when Ann Marie and I created our own Bat Cave in the storage area of her carport. We used cardboard boxes to create the high tech equipment needed to fight crime. Now usually in my own take charge manner I would have insisted on being Batman. However, I had read that the actor who played Robin shared a birthday with me. This was just too cool of a coincidence to let go by. I played Robin and Ann Marie was Batman. We ran around with our capes made out of towels making Gothum City a safe place once again. I do remember saying, though, "Hey, Batman don't you think we ought to....." quite a lot. It seems you can take the bossy girl out of the lead position, but you can't take the lead position out of the bossy girl. In fact, a few years prior my Mom had warned me that if I didn't stop being so bossy I would never have any friends. I knew better than to talk back, but as I left I remember thinking, "Well they'll do anything I say." 

St. Margaret Mary's

St. Margaret Mary's. This was the name of my elementary school in Florida which I attended from grades 4-6.  I have many fond memories of this place. I remember on one of my first days there the teacher said we would be going to the laboratory. I was thrilled. What a really cool school  to have its own laboratory. You can imagine my disappointment when we ended up at the rest rooms. Apparently there was a place called the lavatory and I had just been introduced to it. St. Margaret Mary's was also where I learned about where babies came from. No, it was not sex education; rather it was from a more mature fifth grader named Rose who broke the news to me and my friend behind a tree on the blacktop. She began her discussion by asking us if we knew where babies came from? Being a good Catholic girl and the oldest of five kids I knew immediately. Of, course you prayed for a baby and then your prayers were answered through your pregnancy. Now Rose knew better. Not only did she explain in graphic detail, followed later by illustrations, she announced that, "You had to do it when
you were eleven!" Considering the fact that I was ten at the time it was actually quite disturbing. Now
 although, the thought of "doing it" was not on my radar at the time, I did have my first crush here.
His name was Mark Zinser, and he was both cute and funny. I was totally impressed because his Dad had been on the PT 109 with our then president John Kennedy.  I was also good friends with his twin sister Marcia, in fact we were cheerleaders together. I remember ironing the letters SMM on a white sweatshirt before cheering at Mark's football game. I also remember getting in trouble for laughing at one of Mark's funny impressions, and the teacher asking me if I wanted her to move our desks closer together. I was mortified! The most memorable memory of Mark, though, was on Valentine's Day when I received thirteen valentines from him. It must have been true love. He had collected all the extra valentines from his sisters to give to me. Although, I was attending a parochial school, I never actually had a nun as a teacher. I do remember considering the vocation of becoming a nun. I guess my desire to have four kids won out. I do remember that I enjoyed my time there and left half way through my sixth grade year to move to Texas.

Dancing in the Living Room

Dancing in the living room. When we lived in Florida one of my favorite things to do was dance in the living room. Our living room was one of the few carpeted rooms in our home and it was sunken as it had a step down from the dining room. There was a rod iron railing that divided the two rooms. Not only did I love to dance in this room, this was where I would secretly take my baby brother to teach him to walk. Apparently, I wanted credit for this event. I spent many hours listening and dancing to Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass. The album belonged to my parents and displayed a young woman covered in nothing but whipped cream. Although, I had never taken any formal lessons I enjoyed flinging myself around the room, leaping with my arms flung out. It was some time during this period I asked my parents if I could take tap dancing lessons at the local dance studio. Once a week I would ride my bike up to The Royal School of Ballet for my lesson and learn all about shuffle, ball change, step. We would also spend some time doing some sort of tumbling, which I remember not being very good at. However, I enjoyed learning how to tap dance and took great pleasure in the sound of my tap shoes hitting the floor. I ended the season with a dance recital that my father and sister attended. It did seem a little odd years later when I looked back on it that my mother had not attended. This was the one and only time that I took formal dance lessons of any kind. However, in Jr. High and High School I was a member of the drill team.