Last week time came up behind me, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.<\/p>\n
My two oldest grandchildren graduated from sixth grade.<\/p>\n
I think it was maybe about five years ago that I was in sixth grade. I remember it well. Mr. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Barr had borrowed my huge and beloved \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fascinating Facts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d book\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe one that told me that Chinese people eat eggs that are very old and that a murderer had been caught because his image remained in the eyes of the victim. I could hardly wait to get it back as I read it every night. Each day in school, we would practice for graduation. We learned a large number of songs that we were going to sing in two part harmony. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mind the singing, but standing on the bleachers for hour after hour was less than comfortable.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at home, my parents were getting ready for a vacation to Florida. My graduation, you see, was in January, at the end of the first semester of school because at that time, two classes a year entered school, one in September and one in February. We were going to move on to seventh grade and junior high school within a week of our graduation. My parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 vacation lasted for two weeks and they came back about a week before the graduation. <\/p>\n
My mother had bought me a large wardrobe of new dresses because graduation meant at least 4 parties and 2 dances and I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wear something that was old. Even though this was only the mid 1950s, there was already social pressure. My first \u00e2\u20ac\u0153grown-up\u00e2\u20ac\u009d party was when I was in fifth grade. I remember my mother coming home from the store with a bag for me. It contained stockings and a garter belt! It was, after all, in the era before pantyhose were invented.<\/p>\n
When my parents returned from Florida, they brought me an additional dress. It was navy linen and had a navy linen short \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bolero\u00e2\u20ac\u009d jacket with red piping and a red cloth flower on it. I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait for the celebrating to begin.<\/p>\n
The Saturday night before graduation there was a dance at our school. My father drove me and a friend to the dance. While we were there, Larry Silverman, a tall, lean, blond boy asked me to dance. At the end of the evening, he asked me if I would go out with him for ice cream. I went to the pay phone and called my mother. She told me that it would not be polite to my friend to leave without her and that I should return home with her and then my father would drive me back to the dance and we would pick up Larry and my father would drive us to the ice cream parlor. So, on my very first almost-date, my father sat outside in the cold in his car waiting for Larry and me to finish our ice cream, and then he drove us home.<\/p>\n
Monday morning when I got up, my mother looked at me and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What happened to you!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what she was talking about. She said that I had a rash on my face. I looked into the mirror, and she was right. She looked at my neck and then my arms and legs. The rash was there too. In fact, the rash was all over my body. My mother was not pleased. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand yet what was bothering her. She said to me, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Did you kiss Larry Silverman?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The question was completely shocking. The thought had never entered my mind. I am certain it hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t entered Larry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s either. The implication, of course, was that kissing causes rashes. Alas, it was not the imagined kiss, it was measles.<\/p>\n
So while everyone was graduating and partying, I sat on my bed and my beautiful new dresses hung in the closet. <\/p>\n
Mr. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Barr never returned my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fascinating Facts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week time came up behind me, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. My two oldest grandchildren graduated from sixth grade. I think it was maybe about five years ago that I was in sixth grade. I remember it well. Mr. O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Barr had borrowed my huge and beloved \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fascinating Facts\u00e2\u20ac\u009d book\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe one that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drsavta.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}