When I Was Ten

Last week I started writing some posts about what was important to me at five, ten, fifteen, and so on. It has been so much fun to try to recover my experiences and perspective from those stages of my life so far. Here's the one when I was five. The only problem is that I don't know how much difference there is between my five- and ten-year-old voices. Eh, whatever. It's just a BLOG POST, Ali, not a freakin' doctoral dissertation.

Ten

My mom is a good mom to me because she bakes delicious cookies and cakes and she takes us to the library to get as many books as we want and she buys me clothes to wear when I am not in school because we have to wear uniforms in school.

My dad works really hard at the church but when he is home we have a great time. One of his favorite things to do is to have me and my brother take turns standing up on the fireplace hearth like it’s a stage and he tells us something to give a speech about. Get this, if we don’t know anything about it we have to act like we know even if we have to make stuff up! I had to do that about Zen Buddhism. I knew about Buddha but I said they had to say “Zen, zen, zen” when they pray and I don’t know if that’s right. My brother gets easier things to talk about because he is little. He was supposed to tell the story of Jonah and he said Jonah packed his toothbrush and his jammies, which is not in the Bible at all, but Mom and Dad laughed and laughed about it. Dad says this will help us be good extemporaneous speakers, but does that mean we will be good at making things up when we don’t know what to say? Is that what he does when he is preaching? I’ve never asked him.

I am in the sixth grade, if we had grades, which we don’t really because we just keep doing our own work, whatever level we’re on, and all the elementary kids are in the same room with the same teacher. If I was in public school I would be in a class with a bunch of kids doing all the same work. I’m kind of scared of public school because I’ve never been to one. School is still easy for me except math. I HATE math and sometimes I cry when I can’t get the answers right even though I have erased it over and over again. My teacher tells me I need to take my time and not try to rush through it and then I won’t make mistakes. I want to rush through it though, because I hate it so much. The rest of my work is okay and I do a lot of it. The principal says I am so far ahead that he will have to put me back onto my grade level with a different type of work, which doesn’t seem fair since I already did all of the work I'm supposed to. He says if he didn’t put me back, I would graduate when I am fourteen, which would be fine with me.

My best friend is Leann, who I have known since she was three and I was four. All of us girls like to play make-believe games at break time. We pretend we are characters on TV shows, which is not always easy for me to know what to do because I don’t have a TV, but Leann does and I can watch over there sometimes. Our favorite games to play are Remington Steele and Nancy Drew. (I know a lot about Nancy Drew because of the books.) I think I should get to be Nancy because she has “Titian” hair which I looked up and it means reddish blond, which is exactly the color of my hair. But the other girls all want a turn being Nancy and no one wants to be George because she is a tomboy with a boy’s name. I like recess but not P.E. because I am not any good at kickball or softball which is usually what we have to play.

Speaking of boys, there is one that I like. His name is Richard and he goes to church with me but not school. He is SO CUTE !!! I should not have written a note to my friend saying I liked him, because awful Stephen got the note and told Richard. I thought I would die!!! When I told my dad, he said I should remember not to put anything incriminating in writing, whatever that means. But then later Richard slipped me a note in a pink envelope he made himself and it said: “Do you still like me? Yes or no? P.S. Keep this letter a secret!” and he had underlined secret three times so I knew he was afraid Stephen would find out. And he put in a Garbage Pail Kids card, which shows a Statue of Liberty holding a bag of rotten garbage, which is not romantic at ALL, but I am not going to take that wrong because of the note. My first love note! I will keep it forever even when I am a grownup lady.*

*Promise kept. Observe: