Friday, February 26, 2010

Class of 1990 Week 26

Monday when I left for school it was raining. The rain froze as it hit the car, and since the car wasn’t warm yet, by the time I drove the half mile down our road toward county road three I had to stop to scrape my window. I almost fell when I got out of the car, the road was so slick. It was a very slow ride to school. It was a crazy weather day. When I got out of school it was snowing and blowing and visibility was terrible. By 5:00 it was clear and the sun was shining.

Tuesday after school Mom and I went to Cavalier so the country nurse could give me a tetanus shot so we could finish my health form and send it off to Concordia Wisconsin.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. I had a hard time getting dressed because my arm was so sore from the shot. It was another picture day. We retook the volleyball picture so we would have the right stats in the picture. We didn’t get much done in senior math as Mrs. Hollis kept going off on tangents. People kept asking me if I was going to prom. I’d reply, “Only if someone asks me, and nobody will, so I guess I won’t be.” They would then point out that I went by myself Jr. Year. It’s one thing to go to a prom that you’ve spent hours the prior week prepping and decorating for but how socially pathetic do you have to be to go alone twice. Twenty people came to church that night. Only seven stayed for the youth group coffee after. The big news of Wednesday was that I got a scholarship from Concordia University Wisconsin. The Presidential Scholarship would cover about a third of my expenses and was renewable provided I managed to keep my GPA over a 3 point each semester.


Thursday Mr. Hanson took some time out of business law to inform us that Kevin would be the valedictorian and three of us would be co-salutatorians, Terry, Peter, and me. That meant that half the class would be making speeches for graduation. In Math I gave Mrs. Hollis a hard time for missing playing organ at the Lenten service the night before. I also made it to Shop during study hall so I could work on my bookcase. After school I helped set up for the Science Fair. My arm was still hurting so I just taped numbers on the tables. After that I went to a Year Book meeting. After that was a workshop for the school play. I got out of doing charades. I did everything else but I’ve always hated charades.


Friday was the school science fair. Thanks to Mr. Watson (the previous science teacher) once Science was an elective you were no longer required to do a project. He also eliminated the science fair for the 1st to 4th grade, reasoning, correctly that the parents worked harder on them than the students did. There was an experiment where you soaked a hardboiled egg in vinegar for like a month and then it would bounce—if I remember right, Peter, Jason, & Peggy had all done that project in various years. Juniors and seniors taking the science elective spent the day helping out. We also paired up to act as judges for the fifth and sixth grade projects. I was paired with Jr. Corey. We judged 6th grade projects. Basically, I asked all the questions and made all the decisions and Corey wrote them down. Jr. Paul and Kevin were also judging 6th graders. As I wrote it then:

After the 6th graders left for lunch we tallied our scores, then Kevin said, “Let's pretend were judging Tooter.” So we went, but he wouldn’t answer our questions, but Rachel jumped up very eager to talk about her project. Then we went back to Tooter and grilled him. Man it was funny. Next we did J.J. It was a riot. His project didn’t make sense at all.

The students we pretened to judge were freshmen. All the jr. high and high school students projects were judged by people Miss Kassian invited from UND. Without fail the real judges all had backgrounds in biology which made for a deep disadvantage if your project was in another field.

With the end of the Science fair my little reference business was over. I made three bucks. I gathered all the books on the topics, copied any articles we had and gave them a page with all the title and page number citations in the school's reference books that pertained to their topic I could have made $4 but I turned down one client. I still use the one I turned down as a teaching example in my work. When I asked her what her project was on she said, “Rocks.”

“What about rocks?”

“You know, like different kinds of rocks and stuff.”

“Is it about properties or how they are formed or where you find them?”

“It’s just all about rocks.”

"I need something more specific to work with, there are too many resources to gather about rocks.”We went in circles like this for a few minutes and then I told her that she could come and find me when she narrowed her topic. She never did.


Mom and Dad had gone to Plumas, MB, to visit the church that had issued the call to my dad. They didn’t get home until 9:30. Mom and I stayed up until 12:30 talking about what moving there would entail. The parsonage was small: one bathroom, two bedrooms, and only three closets in the entire house and no place at all for Dad’s books. Mom wasn’t sure how she would handle it. A lot of stuff would have to go.


Saturday I slept in until 11 am. I then spent the day taking my room apart. Mom was encouraging me to get rid of some junk. That night she went to a homemaker’s dinner and I made pancakes for Dad and Myself. We watched Star Trek the Next Generation and then Columbo together.


Sunday I taught Sunday school. In the afternoon the LYF went curling in Cavalier and because I was one of only two members who had ever curled before they made me a skip. I didn’t like that because if you are not sweeping it’s very easy to get cold on the ice. I was proud of myself for not falling down at all.That night the Simpsons was on and Bart was writing my all time favorite sentence on the board, “I will not waste chalk.”

REG


lhg edited and approved.

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