Time Travel Tuesday: 12

Annie is hosting a fun new meme called Time Travel Tuesday. I didn't get a chance to participate earlier in the day because I was having trouble remembering age 12. Once I was able to get home and flip through some old pictures it has all come flooding back. :-)

My birthday falls early in January so that makes it easy for me to associate my age with a particular year... it was 1991 for me. I was in 6th grade and 7th grade that year... which at my school meant the transition from elementary school to middle school. But let me start at the beginning of the year...

For my birthday that year I had a big party at Luigi's Pizzeria (I think it's a furniture store now) that was probably the predecessor to places like CiCi's. I didn't have big birthday parties every year but I think that my parents had a big one that year because they knew that the next year I would be at a new campus with different friends. Anyways... I remember this birthday because I wore a Hawaii Sweatshirt and a black dress hat... gotta love my fashion sense! I don't have a scanner handy or I would possibly share this embarrassment with the world. For the party, my dad went through the home movies of activities and parties that my elementary school class had participated in and put them all on a video that we played on a big screen tv during the birthday party. I would love to go back and find that video some day... I know it's still around.

For sixth grade I had Mrs. Harrison who wasn't my favorite teacher but she was a good teacher. The two sixth grade classes were in trailers that year which I actually liked for whatever reason. My acting career (yeah right!) got off the ground that year as I played the Nurse in our class production of Romeo and Juliet. For whatever reason I also vividly remember having to write my first essay on a test in 6th grade Social Studies. I was a good student but I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown when they told us we would have to write an essay on a test. :-) I was also the editor of our elementary school newspaper that year. That year was also the year that they built the high school I would eventually go to.

In our elementary school awards ceremony that year I remember getting called up for lots of awards. I felt so important because we were the oldest class at the school and I counted and I got as many (or more) awards than anyone else. I remembered looking up to sixth graders when I was in the lower grades so it felt so awesome to have all of them looking up at me. They probably just thought I was a geek... and they were probably right but I didn't care. :-) I loved elementary school... unfortunately that school was blown away in a tornado when I was a Jr. in high school. Fortunately it happened at night and no one was on campus.

1991 was also my first year of Summer Church camp. I had been to girl scout camp before but that was the first summer when I actually enjoyed camp. I was terribly terribly homesick (this was before the days of 6th graders having cell phones) but I really loved it. This was also the year that I fell through a window at camp. It's a long story but I was trying to make my bed (which was a mattress on the floor) and I fell rear end first through a plate glass window. I wasn't hurt at all but I was terribly embarrassed.

When school started back in the fall it was off to 7th grade in a new campus with a bunch of kids I didn't like. Our school had two elementary schools and when you got to 7th grade they were combined for the first time. The two groups didn't mesh all that well and there were lots of kids I didn't particularly care for. Middle School was probably my least favorite school years but I survived and I'm hopefully a better person for it. I think that 7th grade was the last year that I took piano lessons... I had Mrs. Hattaway for Life Science, Mrs. Newton for English, Mrs. Gilliland for Geography, a principal I couldn't stand and some other teachers that I don't remember... not the most stellar group of teachers I ever had. I don't have my year books here with me or I would share some of my activities for that year... but for now I will spare you.

Overall I would say 12 was a good year. The first half was better than the second but not too many complaints from me. Thanks Annie for allowing me this walk down memory lane!