Reliving the Past is Not So Fun

Do you remember that time back at the end of last summer when A Ton of Bricks seemed to be adding a new daily feature nearly every day? Well, today we are resurrecting an ancient idea. One that is both epic and pointless at the same time. Memory Lane Monday. Basically, we're doing this because telling anecdotes is fun, easy, and probably not at all interesting to all y'alls. This is part of my plot to drive my readership from negligibly above zero to actually zero.

So, over the next couple of months, I will tell at least one story from every year in my life in succession, starting with my first year of school today. This will provide me with about 20 weeks worth of posts that I don't really need to think about much. Sweet!

Kindergarten - Age 5 (or 6)

I went to half-day kindergarten in the afternoons at McKinley Elementary in Yakima, WA. There were two elementary schools in our district that looked identical: McKinley, and Garfield. Coincidentally, those two identical schools were both named after assassinated presidents. But this has nothing to do with my story.

In Mrs. Hereth's (spelling may be wrong) class we had Show And Tell. Part of the fun was that, upon rising from your seat and heading to the front of the class, you would not just show what it was that you had brought to school. No, first you would give clues as to what it was and other members of the class would guess. One of the goals in such a system is to bring something that people cannot guess easily. One week, I brought what I thought was the best thing ever. I gave two clues up front because I was sure that no one would guess. My clues were:

1. It is round.
2. You kick it.

I was sorely dissapointed and confounded when the first guess was, correctly, "A soccer ball." What a stupid game.


Okay, two stories this week because the brickwife loves this one. It's short, don't worry.

On Valentine's Day 1986, my Kindergarten class did the same thing that classes everywhere did. Each student made a personalized envelope to hold all the booty that would be collected from other students. Before the day arrived, Mrs. Hereth sent home a list of all the students in the class, so everyone's parents would know how many little Garbage Pail themed cards (or whatever else was popular that year) to school on the 14th. But somehow, my name got left off the list. That meant that on Valentine's Day, while everyone else had some 25 cool little cards, some with candy attached, I received one. The only one I received was from my best friend, Todd Urlacher. He was the only one that remembered me.