Mommy's Piggy Tales - Eighth Grade

This is the tenth in a series of blogs I'm writing for Mommy's Piggy Tales . Janna has provided a forum for members to write and share stories from their youth. It's a great adventure! Feel free to join in here.

There's a reason we're supposed to write things down. Yesterday I was thinking there was something I needed to add to this, but now I can't remember. This entry may seem a bit disjointed, but here's what I wrote about 8th Grade when I was in college:

In eighth grade we did “Finian’s Rainbow” and I had the girl’s lead of Sharon. I’ll never forget that; I had to sing solos and memorize a ton of lines besides sewing my costumes and keeping up my school work. However, that was the highlight of my extra-curricular activities.

I loved reading, and at times I was reading a book a day. Most of them were silly romantic novels, but I learned to love good books also. I was in quite a few clubs, including Student Council. I continued to play the oboe in band, and I was also taking Algebra, French, and U.S. Government.

One time in Government, when we were studying the age of inventions, Dad came in and gave a presentation on patents. I had never before realized what exciting things Dad did, and I guess it’s been a long time since then that I’ve talked to him about it.

I continued my 4.0 grade point average and graduated as valedictorian of my class of 1976. I received my first pair of high heels for graduation and felt quite grown up. Graduation was happy and sad. It was particularly sad because I knew I was moving. My best friend, Leslie Pinkney, gave me a surprise going-away party. That was fun, but I wish now I knew what had happened to all of those friends; I wasn't very good at keeping in touch.

My church activity those two years was hectic also. I was Beehive President my 8th grade year and there were only three active girls, so it was a real challenge. Sister Burdett was our advisor, and she was terrific. I loved MIA and we had some good times. One time we had a square dance, and I was still sewing buttons on a new dress in the car on the way there. We also had some fun snow trips and terrific lessons.

This was also the year we went to court to have the adoption of George, Ida, and Ben become official (the top picture). And I continued taking piano lessons (the bottom picture). Find more pictures (from my yearbook that year) over here.

Oh, I remember the story now. One of the classes I took in junior high was a cooking class. The other night I didn't feel like doing the dishes before going to bed, so I just rinsed everything and left the crockpot to soak. I was going to add the wooden spoon to the crockpot because it was crusty too when I remembered the "cooking class incident" and couldn't. Apparently, you're not supposed to let wooden spoons stay immersed because they get swollen and yucky. One day in cooking class, before I learned that important information, I left the wooden spoon in the dishwater while I went to do something else and my teacher yelled at me. It was a traumatic experience. And so the other night, I left the wooden spoon on the counter and just washed it in the morning. Isn't it interesting what we remember?!