Memories...More Memories...

Sorry the picture is blurry. This is a my school picture from 1st grade in Vegas. I specifically remember discussing what I should wear with my mother. She told me to steer clear of a white shirt as it drowns people out, and told me that these neon colors would be great...plus, our school colors were all the neon colors. In the late 80's early 90's, nothing could have been better!
A few nights back on the walk we went on that I blogged about, Shar and I got talking about school lunches somehow. He said that his dad packed him a cotto salami sandwich EVERY day. He hated it and was so sick of it that by the time he was in HS he started to bring his own money for lunch. I told Shar that although my parents were probably scraping the bottom of the barrel at times, they never skimped on food, or cut back in any way shape or form. Nothing much has changed...you go to my mom's house right now and there's still ten boxes of cereal to choose from...I told Shar that we also took a lunch to school and that it consisted of a half sandwich, either PB&J, egg salad, tuna, lunch meat, whatever we chose or whatever mom had, an individual size bag of chips of our choosing, a pack of fruit snacks, a treat...either something mom had made or 50 cents for the student store, and a Capri Sun drink. Sometimes we'd take other stuff like an individual sized applesauce or a granola bar. I guess I was lucky compared to Sharrid. I told him that I was very happy with my lunch.
There was a desk in the cafeteria that was the "put the food you don't want on here" desk so that less fortunate kids could go skim over the table and eat food for free. Good idea that backfired. It had no affect on me though. I knew kids that didn't need that food were looking over the desk for anything good. As I remember, EVERY day there would be nothing but about 20 sandwiches on the desk. Kids would come in, empty their bags, and immediately throw their sandwich's on the desk. I couldn't believe how ungrateful they were. I admit, there were days I did not want to eat my sandwich, but I would never put it on the desk! How would my mom feel. She made the sandwich with her own two hands, and we both knew it was probably the only thing substantial in my lunch. The thought of just discarding it like that...It just seemed like the worst thing possible to me, even at the age of 7. So mother, I just want you to know that I am "desk free" and your half of sandwich was never made in vain.
Sharrid and I laughed a lot during our walk....about school lunches.

Who gets the most improved award...ME! Yeah, here I am senior year of HS! I took weight training for 3 years as one of my electives and in HS I was pretty ripped. A minor issue with my wrist got me thinking of my old weight training days. Here's how it went down. Lately as I've been working out, I noticed my wrist hurting a bit one night. I had forgotten but knew right away it was the same thing I had in HS. One day in weight training, my teacher and I were horsing around. (Fullman and I were always goofing off) and she grabbed me by the wrist, and pulled me. My reaction was "ouch,...that kind of hurt" She was not trying to hurt me at all and asked me if I was serious (we weren't serious with each other that often) I was serious and she said that maybe I had Carpel tunnel or something...from my drumming, and that my weight lifting aggravated it a little. We compared the inside of our wrists and saw that my vein thingy's stuck out, while hers were flat against her skin...hmmm. She joked that maybe that's why I sucked at wrist curls. She was probably right. Anyway, I never thought much of that day except that I did feel like whatever caused my wrists to hurt when my veins were squeezed a bit was from my drumming. It's all in the wrist. I had drummed for 7 years at this point.

Anyway, it all made me think back to my relationship with Fullman. We were really great friends. Of course she had to be my teacher and give me grades, but we were good friends more than anything. I used to mess up her hair all the time, and she'd throw me around like a rag doll. She was SO buff! It's weird but more cool that I've found myself being good friends with not only people my age, but people much older than I am. I haven't really had many friends that were much younger. I have this thing about kids though. It's hard to explain but I'm very reserved around them, unless I know them really well. I was really good friends with Melanie, one of my 7th grade teachers. My relationship with her reminded me of my relationship with my Aunt who was single and had never been married. Aunt Lisa was and still is a mother to me. She loves me like I am hers. Maybe that's why I liked being around Melanie. It made me think of Lisa and all the memories we had. Melanie and I went camping one time together up to the snow. It was night when we got there, and we were missing parts to our tent so we put the seat down in her little Geo Metro ha ha....She was so enthusiastic and adventurous! I was always at their house, eating dinner with them and helping Melanie organize stuff for school. She was SO positive and ALWAYS smiling. You couldn't wipe it off her face. I remember when I was in her class and some trouble maker would act up and she'd give him warnings and eventually send him out of the room to the office, ALL with a smile beaming across her face. It was so funny to see that. Man, I miss all that. We made each other laugh ALL the time.

So, this memory is to old friendships. It's great because whenever I see these people, it's like we were never away. We just pick up where we left off. If I ever live near them again, I know we'll meet up again and be good friends again.