well i waited until the last minute for 5th grade...probably because it was another difficult year for me...i had mrs. seagul who was an elderly woman who said she had never had a class as challenging and mean to her in her entire tenure (she retired after our class)...i wasn't mean to her but i felt like i was one of the only people of my friends in the "uncool" class...lots of troubled classmates all in one class...this was the year when a lot of cliques and clubs and ways of segregating "us" and "them" formed...for example, i vividly remember "the unicorn club" which was a brand of clothing that was cool in that grade...you could only be in this cool club if you had a label with said unicorn on it...they tended to make like hot pink pants with a purple unicorn that matched a purple shirt with a hot pink unicorn logo...i remember these colors were cool because i had gone through a growth spurt and got a new set of clothes...within a couple years i was not growing and then it was early 80's and fluorescent colors were in when i had a wardrobe of hot pink, turquoise and hot pink.
on this free associating journey i also remember loving the song "flashdance" by irene cara and wearing let warmers and shirts off the shoulder to go along with her video. "what a fEELING...feels believing...i can have it all if i dance right..." don't have time to verify this recollection of the lyrics...i did some sort of gynastics number to this...
one of the most painful memories from this time period was the friends who used to rotate as my "best friend" decided we needed to have a very important group meeting nearly every lunch where they would in all seriousness tell one another things like "i think you should know you have a very ugly nose" or just disclose to one another all the horrible things we thought about one another under the guise of being a good friend to "help" one another...it was horrible...
i'll have to write more late tonight...
this is post #7 of 12 recording my childhood through mommy's piggy tales (MPT)....
Sometimes the real friends are disguised and we have to figure out who they are. Your description of the 5th grade "us" and "they" is right on target!
ReplyDeleteOh, we are cruel to each other!
ReplyDeleteYou were adorable!
Simply adorable!
I remember in 5th grades wearing our coats backwards and having a teacher I respected. My friend wanted me to only be friends with her and no one else so we parted company.
ReplyDelete