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Seeing the freshly painted lines in the street and crosswalks, signaled the school year was here. All bright and shiny like we would look as we arrived at school each morning. As you probably have figured out by now, I did not, but it wasn’t for lack of mom trying. I seemed to be able to spot a mud puddle, a mile away. And if it had crinkly mud curls. I had been known to take off my shoes and crunch those curls between my toes, thus making me late again. If I happen to find a frog, I was going to be spending the day with my nose in the corner... And a note to mom and dad, gotta tell ya, that never ended well.

The fun part of the new school year, was seeing all your friends again. Yes you saw them at the swimming pool every day. But, it wasn’t the same. Now we had to see who had the coolest book covers, pencil cases, and the biggie. The Lunch Box. Grade school was an important time for lunch boxes. My brother had a Green Hornet & Batman, I had The Banana Splits, & The Archies, I know there were many neat ones, but those stand out in my mind. The only thing more important than the box was the content.

My awesome mom put soup in a thermos, a little baggie with chips, to put on your bologna sammich. And usually a cookie or apple or such. The later items were most important, the bargaining items. If I could trade that cookie and fruit for something wonderful, my day would be complete. Many times Donna would bring ding dongs. Oh man, we swapped a lot, I would have given her my whole lunch, my box, everything for a ding dong.

Next thing on mothers agenda was to see our Dentists Dr. Seegrist, who on more than one occasion told me to quit squirming.. But seriously, did you ever know a dentist with as big a hands as he did. Even with my big mouth, they were huge!

After that fiasco was over, we went to see Dr. Wilkinson, I loved him and his nurse Jesse. Even if I had to get a shot. Because in the Slagle Clinic where you got the shot, was in the lab. And just seeing that centrifuge was cool, but if it was running. Oh ya mini carnival ride for a hamster if they would let me near it.

Dr. Bowen our eye Doctor would be next on the list. He was so funny, I wore glasses from 4th grade on, so we got to visit a lot.

We had been back in school for a few days now. that first weekend finally arrived and my mom had snuck in one more appointment. I had to have a hair cut, as she was tired of yelling at me every morning to brush my hair or let her. My hair was fairly long. So she sent me to Kurl and Swirl, it was behind the Rhoads building at that time. I don’t know who cut it, I just know mother insisted on a pixie cut. It supposedly was the in style. One look in the mirror made me question my moms sanity. She spent half of her day trying to convince me I should act and look like a young lady. Then this. I looked like a boy, so I went home, threw on my dirty sweat shirt, and went and played baseball with the neighbor kids. This was going to be a long, long school year. I wondered how it was going to come out. I didn’t wonder too long, Halloween was around the corner, so I had a lot to be thinking about.

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