When I was in Grade 3 things were?

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

1944-45 for me.  Well, let's start with the school year.  We had the usual fall, and kicked piles of leaves around.  My mother was looking forward to Dad being repatriated from England, where he spent his war years.  The war was nearly over, but the rationing lingered on, and on, and on.  Everything was in short supply.

Winter came late in October with the usual, for those days, blizzard and a three foot snow fall.  About two weeks after it was clear that the snow would be around for a while, my cousins and I built a snow fort on the side lawn.  We used this, to us, huge fortification until well after Christmas, maintaining it by replacing parts of the walls with snow blocks cut out of the lawn with snow shovels.  That was the year I got the chicken pox and was quarantined at my maternal grandparents.  I couldn't be quarantined at home because Mom was working and had to be out and about meeting people.  She was working as a secretary to the owner of a construction company and often travelled to the war-time housing sites with him to take notes.  It was a hard winter, with lots of snow, and things didn't let up until April, when it got warm enough to melt the rest of the snow fort, and the side garden early flowers (crocus, daffodils, snow drops) started blooming.

Spring was wonderful.  D-day passed the previous summer and we were chasing the schweinhund Nazi's back to their lair.  VE day ended the regular evening blackouts, and the air-raid wardens disappeared.  The RCMP quit watching our German immigrant neighbors.  They never got anything on them because they were just Canadians whose mother and father were born in Germany well before the war.  They had been in Canada for ages.  The sons often baby-sat for me.  Times were tough, but we made our own fun.  Instead of playing cops and robbers we played war games.  I tried not to be a Nazi in those games.  We were, of course, thoroughly propagandized to hate Germans and Japanese.  So I helped with the chores around the yard, and played with my Christmas present, a blue plastic car about three inches long.  Also went out to see my cousins around the block on my tricycle.

Fall came around again.  Mom heard some really dirty language in the school yard and transferred me to the Catholic school, which was all the way at the other end of town.  I had to take two street cars to get there. {There was no School busing of any kind in those days.}  My old school was across the street and I came home for lunch.  Now I had to carry lunch.  Mom thought the standard would be better at the church school.  She never found out how sadly mistaken she was, it was a hot-bed of grade 7 and 8 girls getting pregnant and, in those days, just quietly disappearing.  I don't think it was any different in the public schools.  It just cost more for me to go to school.  Dad was still in England at Christmas and didn't get back until summer of 1946.  But that's another story.

---

Comment:  I know it was longer ago than many on this board have been alive, but the winters were colder and the summers were better when I was a kid.  A lot of stuff was still done by horses and horse-drawn vehicles.  Prices were war-time and frozen (e.g. a dozen eggs was twelve cents).  The U.S. dollar was on the gold standard with gold pegged at $35.00 per fine ounce.  I had a border crossing card to get into the states because we lived at Niagara Falls and the better shopping was in Niagara Falls, New York.  Also, I could go into a bar over there, but kids were disallowed in beverage rooms in Canada.  We didn't find out what Mr. Truman did for about at week after Hiroshima, and didn't understand it when we did.  Life was simpler.  Better?  I don't know.

[fukuda 351]

1996-1997 for me

I don't remember much of my childhood (and I'm just 22!) and sincerely, most has been voluntarily forgotten.

My family just moved to Spain the year before so I still was trying to integrate and learn the local language, Catalan. At school, everybody inferred from my first 2 spanish names that I was a spanish kid coming from another region instead of a french kid (I was already almost native-level at spanish). However, part of my family was of spanish origin and was subjected to forced exile for political reasons in the past (3/4 of my grandparents), which allowed me to acquire the spanish citizenship during the year.

Now I had 1 name and 2 family surnames, my father's one and my mother's one, instead of just one surname as the french model states. And my mother's one was.. well a bit exotic for my classmates (it's my username), so I was the focus of attention for 1/2 of the year.

Unluckily, there's nothing more I remember except the same repetitive classes and me falling in love with maths back then.

[Easy Bakes 253]

3rd grade for me was 1972. I was between 7-8.

I spent most of that year in Bethesda Naval Hospital, recovering from my 1st heart surgery to repair the hole in my heart i was born with.in 1972 there was none of this day surgery stuff, major surgery meant weeks ,if not months,in the hospital.

I don't remember a lot of that time, just  recollections of the pink milkshake like stuff that tasted like chalk

i had to drink  before X-rays. and the very old EKG machines that had straps and plates and little suction cups filled with petroleum jelly to hold the probes to your skin.

[blade2k5 1,523]

1972 - don't remember a thing about my early childhood, if you could call it that.

[Mikeaut1 261]

1999 for me! I had my first male teacher in my elementary school career. He was an awesome teacher, he would even come outside for recess with us and play baseball. I connected well with him because I am a big baseball fan as well. Every Thursday we would play spelling baseball, a game where if you spelt a word correctly you would advance to the next base. Upon reaching home you would get extra credit on the spelling test for Friday. Those were good times, I can't live my life at college and say that spelling baseball still gives me good grades.

[Duke87 1,070]

1995-96 here.

I lived right around the corner from my school at this point in time and would walk to and from school with my friend. If for whatever reason my friend was not walking in the morning or afternoon, I was perfectly permitted to walk alone (!). This same friend and I, at break time, would hog the new computer in the classroom playing Treasure Mathstorm. Other times, we would use the old computer and play Number Munchers.

I won a pair of tickets to a Yankee game in a class raffle that spring. We went on a field trip to the Bronx Zoo.

I wasn't aware of it at the time, but my mother apparently made a few unsuccessful attempts to hook my teacher up with my uncle (yeah...). 

My class was in room 208. I remember thinking it was really cool that my classroom had the highest number in the building.

We would switch rooms for English class. Books I read in school that year:

- Bunnicula by James Howe

- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

- Scooter by ?

- Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan

- James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

+ a couple more I can't remember right now

I was in a non-discontinued gifted/talented program called "ELP" (Extraordinary Learners' Program), where I'd get to leave class for a couple hours a week to go do more intellectually stimulating stuff with other smart kids. The focus of the program for third graders was archaeology. We talked about Pompeii, among other things.

There was this test the schools gave all the kids at the end of first grade to pick out the smart kids to stick in the program. However, since I completed first and second grade in the same year, it wasn't until the end of second grade that I took it. It was suppose to be a ridiculously tough test. Just 15 out of 30 correct answers qualified a student for ELP. My score? 30 out of 30 (there's always the one that breaks the curve...).

A couple non-school personal notes:

Third grade was the year I became an atheist. It was also the year I started taking Prozac for my OCD that I had been diagnosed with the year before.

[Meg 368]

1966 – 67 for me.  I walked to school, around a corner and up a hill, then climbing stairs that lead to the bottom of the playground.   My brother (2 years older) was supposed to be watching me and my sister (2 years younger) between the time we were out of Mom’s sight and we got to the playground but he always ditched us as soon as he could.

My teacher had the odd habit of turning her head sideways whenever she walked through a door.  Apparently she thought she was going to hit her head but she wasn’t close to being that tall.  We had a music teacher who pushed a cart around, going from classroom to classroom.   I don’t recall singing or playing an instrument but she had us doing these weird chanting drills.  (Repeat after me, class:  “ta, ta, TEE, TEE, ta” )

At the time, I did not know that the school was segregated.  They didn’t make an issue of it.  I barely knew that black people existed.  The only ones I saw were the men who collected the garbage and the janitor at the school.   He had this long push broom he used to push a pile of green, soft, gravel-shaped stuff down the hall.  It was supposed to help clean the floor somehow.

They would bring a television set into class to watch the Gemini space missions.  Those were the capsules that carried two astronauts into orbit.  We had seen the rendezvous of two Gemini space capsules the year before but they stopped showing us the missions when the Apollo program started.  They did not tell us it was because the Apollo 1 astronauts were killed by a fire.

My brother and I used to walk to the drugstore, which was about a quarter of a mile away, and go the soda fountain.  It had a counter and stools and a guy who mixed the milkshakes, just like you see in the old movies.

My family moved in the middle of the school year.  My sister’s first grade teacher managed to convince my mother that it would be bad to transfer schools mid-year so we, along with some friends who had also moved, commuted back and forth from the new neighborhood to the old school.  This was a 10 mile trip each way, with the moms taking turns driving.  I was a commuter at a young age.

In other news:  The original Star Trek series started airing, the Beatles released “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band”, the Vietnam war was cranking up, and the first Superbowl was played.

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[Mountain Dew 0]

2002-2003

Not too long ago, but I barely remember anything past 5th grade... I remember we had a former drill seargent as our teacher, and I was a trouble-maker in school up into Freshman year, so all I remember was being yelled at and spending some time in the Assistant principals office... Oh well

[Muck308 55]

1988-89

In the fall of '88 my mother and sister and I went to a house on the south side of town to pick out a kitten. The breeder had a reputation as one of the finest in the Pittsburgh area and she specialized in maine coon cats. There were four to choose from and we had been promised first pick. Dugone, an earlier pet cat, had passed away about a year before. My mother selected a recluse little kitten that we named Lickrish. Spelled phonetically of course. After about 12 weeks we went back to pick her up and she lived a long and happy life before dying in the summer of 2008. Just a few months shy of 20 years old.

3rd grade was the year I was to be tested for our own gifted program, GOAL. I don't recall what that was an acronym for. My sister was in so my parents had me take the test. I did well, but came up 2 IQ points short of being accepted.

I lived not to far from my school, close enough to walk but I wasn't allowed to do so until the fourth grade. We had art on a cart, but a separate room for music. I still remember some of the songs we sang. Turn, Turn, Turn by The Byrds and The Grandfather Clock stand out to this day. The grandfather clock was too large for the shelf, so it stood ninety years on the floor... At least i think that's how it went.

Of course, there was snow in the winter. I spent great amounts of time outside but as far as the specifics of the weather goes, I don't really recall. All of my grandparents were alive and well at the time. My maternal grandparents were not far away and I saw them often. My paternal grandparents were in sunny California, where my grandmother remains to this day, so visits with them were less frequent. Had I known at the time that both my grandfathers would pass in a couple years, I might have cherished the time I spent with them that much more. But an eight year old doesn't think of such things.

At the end of the year my best friend, Travis ended up being held back to repeat the third grade. This pretty much ended our friendship as we never saw each other anymore. He later moved away before he would finally complete the third grade.

Summer came and my family took a trip to Hawaii. Specifically, we flew into Oahu and then to Kauai Island. I learned how to snorkel and spent time doing so way too close to the massive pile of black volcanic rock that hugged the northern part of the beach.

Converse All Stars were the cool shoes to be had. I had a pair of yellow ones and wore them until they fell off.

Edited to include sudden remembrances.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: blade2k5

1972 - don't remember a thing about my early childhood, if you could call it that.quote>

This is hardly early childhood.  Something really bad must have happened to you, then.  Eventually it will come back to you and you'll have to face it.

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

I don't remember 3rd grade. Well, except for that incident with the baby coconuts...

Barbarossaquote>

If you mentioned that, it must be worth telling, or is it so embarrassing that it blocked your memory of the rest of the year?

---

Early childhood memories from around age 8 (grade 3) are often very formative for children.  They tend to be socialized more completely at this age than at any other time except during infancy IMHO.  If you have a blank then, you should think about why.

[simfreak90 3]

For me, grade 3 was from 1998-1999. What a traumatic experience! I had a teacher who had a heavy spanish accent and we could barely understand her! She wasn't really mean, but she wasn't very good at teaching! And, to make things worse, some little jerk thought it was fun to kick and throw rocks on the playground (while standing right next to me), and you can guess how that ended... 3 stitches in my head!  I didn't like the idea of someone sewing my head shut so I freaked out and it took I think 8 people to hold me down. My mom pulled me out of public school when she found out that the kid was sent home for the day as punishment! I was homeschooled for the rest of grade three and all of grade four, along with my sister who was in 8th grade, so I had lots of fun the rest of the year!

[blade2k5 1,523]

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Originally posted by: blade2k5

1972 - don't remember a thing about my early childhood, if you could call it that.quote>

This is hardly early childhood.  Something really bad must have happened to you, then.  Eventually it will come back to you and you'll have to face it.quote>

[Livin in Sim 83]

Third grade for me was '67-'68.  (Hi, Meg!)

My day began at 6:00.  The bus arrived at 7:15.  We lived about five miles out from a town of around 1000 in Wisconsin.  We  owned and operated a dairy farm to provide milk for Kraft Foods.  My best friend, Debbie, rode on the same bus.  Our teacher that year was older, sixty-ish, and a bit high strung.  I remember a girl coming inside from recess wearing a "Frito Bandito" cardboard mustache.  This, for some reason, disturbed Mrs H greatly.  She snatched it off, tore it to pieces, and stomped on them for good measure.    They remained there until the janitor (Yep, he had the same fascinating green stuff as Meg's janitor!) swept them up.  Mrs H would also lecture us lengthily and heatedly, punctuating these lectures by slapping down a yardstick or snapping up the classroom maps.  She retired the next year.

In spite of this, I loved school.  Through some quirk of fate I had gotten on Mrs H's good side.  I remember being allowed to go to the back of the room to work on making the set backgrounds for a program that we did for Mothers' Club.  This was great fun because a boy I liked (so young!) was working on them as well.  I'm pretty sure he liked me, too, since he teased me mercilessly.    My favorite subjects were Language, Social Studies, Art, and Music.  There was a lot of snow that winter.  This included a big blizzard which came the night before the Christmas Program and party.  The county road had been plowed, so my dad walked about a quarter mile (uphill both ways!) with me to the corner so that I could catch the bus and not miss the party.  The snow was up to my waist in places.

My sister, who was 19 years older than me, had her own place, and I would stay over at times.  We'd watch movies and do makeovers. 

My brother was 14 years older, had finished college, and was drafted.  He did one tour of duty in Vietnam.  Needless to say, this was a very tense time for my parents.  We wrote to him a lot.  My letters always began with, "How are you?  I am fine."  He was wounded by shrapnel, but not seriously.  He received a Bronze Star for acts of bravery.  A gravel truck on top of which they had been riding was attacked and tipped over.  My brother landed clear and dug a couple of his buddies out of the gravel.  They managed to get under cover until help came.  The scariest thing he told me about the war was of the existence of hundreds of miles of tunnels that the Viet Cong used to travel without being detected, to hide for days at a time, and to even receive first aid.  These tunnels, first discovered and infiltrated by Australian and New Zealander soldiers, were designed to be practically impervious to above ground bombing, etc.  My brother, being small in stature, trained with a group of volunteers called tunnel rats.  Their mission was to place explosives, and to flush out tunnel occupants.  Although his first mission was somehat successful, my brother did not volunteer for another.  He just couldn't take the close quarters and danger of booby traps and ambushes.  There were men who volunteered for these missions over and over again.  I understand that a tunnel system of this sort also exists in Afghanistan.

That summer I made a new friend who was spending it with her grandparents on the farm next to ours.  Our favorite activities were riding our "banana seat" bikes, fishing and wading in the creek, going to the swimming hole, and camping out in the yard.  She had a playhouse, and we spent hours in there with our Barbies.    My duties were fetching the cows at chore time, feeding them and the chickens, cleaning the chicken house (ick!), filling the woodbox, weeding the garden, helping to pick produce and can it, and other household tasks too humorous to mention.

Yes, baby coconuts are rather intriguing; do tell. 

[astronelson 339]

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim

The scariest thing he told me about the war was of the existence of hundreds of miles of tunnels that the Viet Cong used to travel without being detected, to hide for days at a time, and to even receive first aid.  These tunnels, first discovered and infiltrated by Australian and New Zealander soldiers, were designed to be practically impervious to above ground bombing, etc.

quote>

I've visited some of the tunnels. They're quite astounding.

Grade 3 for me was 1999. Here in the southern hemisphere the school year isn't offset from the calendar year as it is for you strange people in the north.

The second-last year of the millenium was a time of some controversy in Australia, particularly with the passing of the GST (goods and services tax) bill by the federal government. The referendum on whether Australia should become a republic suffered a 54%-46% defeat on the basis that, under the proposal, the President would be chosen by a two-thirds majority of Parliament, rather than by the people of Australia. Had the proposal been for a President chosen by popular vote, I would now be living in the Parliamentary Republic of Australia.

Other notable events include (list taken from Wikipedia, except the last entry): the establishment of the Euro (January 1); Pluto moving further out from the sun than Neptune (February 11); Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joining NATO (March 12); NATO attacks Yugoslavia (March 24); the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 10,000 for the first time (March 29); Nuvanut is created in Canada (April 1); Bill Gates' fortune exceeds $100,000,000,000 (April ; the Columbine Massacre (April 20); the Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time (May 3); Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace is released (May 19); The first Welsh Assembly in over 600 years opens in Cardiff (May 26); Texas Governor George W. Bush announces he will seek the Republican nomination for President of the United States; Apple releases the first iBook (June 21); The Scottish Parliament is officielly opened by Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II (July 1); John F. Kennedy Jr. crashes his plane (July 16); the first version of MSN Messenger is released (July 22); Kiribati, Nauru, and Tonga join the UN (September 14); the population of Earth reaches 6,000,000,000 (UN estimate) (October 12); East Timor declares separation from Indonesia (independence does not come for quite some time) (October 19); the People's Republic of China launches the first Shenzhou spacecraft (November 20); the Labour Party wins power in New Zealand (November 27); the ExxonMobil merger creates the largest company in the world (November 30); the countdown to the new millenium takes place 1 year early (December 31).

As for what happened in school, I can't really remember much. I know one of my teachers eventually became a fireman. Aside from that, I don't know. I don't really remember events that well. Unlike many members here, it seems, there was absolutely no snow whatsoever. My home state didn't (and still doesn't) have the climate for it.

[hmm 17]

I think Grade 3 for me was between 1994 and 1995 (age 7-8 right?) I dont have much memories of that time but a few good ones stand out.

My older cousin took me to my first rap battle over at the woodside projects and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, standing outside during that hot summer watching various local heros go back and forth dissing each others rapping style, thier flow and times thier families, calling out various gangs... NYPD (the blueberry's because the cars were sky blue and white back then) was always nearby, ready to break the whole thing up because somtimes the gang rivalry got to hot between the rappers and a fight would break out, or worse. Fortunatly this one was relatively peaceful. What really stood out to me was the Dj at that event. He was scratching behind his back, and beat juggling, and this was before Serato and scratch live! No laptops, just two turntables and a mixer! I rember my cousin, she pointed out that he powered  the whole sound-system by hijacking a nearby streetlight. I guess that event stuck with me because now I Dj at various frat and house parties at college and I always manage to slip in some 90's hip hop classics in the middle of my set! (still cant beat juggle though...)

I also remeber that was the first year that I made it inside the wing of my school with air-conditioning! Most of the schools in NYC were built in the 1930's so they are very old and dont have central air, the school I went to however, PS 219Q had an extension built in the 80's called the dome, It is a big open circular space with room for about 6 classes. Since there was no walls sound would always travel between classes. ( I think now they use it as just exibition space).

I bought my first ice cream from a Mr Softy truck with my allowance (vanilla with rainbow sprinkles, and a cherry ICEE)

The only bad memory was getting my third grade teacher fired that year. I dont remeber her name, but I remeber the project involved; it was a geography project and each student was given a city to research, mine was Lagos, Nigeria. I remeber doing tons of reasearch (or my mom did tons of reaserach) on the city and I eneded up writing a one page paper and a large hand drawn poster of the city. My drawings included large skyscrapers and sprawling port and refinery facility because Lagos is one of the most prospeous cities in Africa. This teacher had me throw out that poster and draw another one with huts with thached straw roofs because she thought Africa wasnt as "advanced" as say America. Well that didnt sit well with my parents and week later after visiting the principal several times that teacher was removed. Didnt exactly know what was going on at the time but they fired the teacher for the fear of a racial profiling case.

Despite that one dark spot, I think it was a good year... some local events from that time. Guliani was elected as Mayor and started cracking down on the Gotti familiy, Times square was finaly being cleaned up and being transformed from a red light district into a huge tourist mecca. Most of the graffiti was being cleaned off the subway and being placed in the phun phactory (5pointz), and hip hop was actually worth listening to, they would later call that period (1988-1995) hip-hop's golden age.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Signature by hmm:

Internet Explorer cannot display your signature. Error Code 404quote>

Neither can firefox.

[hyped_up_boy 15]

When I was starting Grade 3, it was 1998, which means my sister was listening to Backstreet Boys and Spice Girls and Pokemon was just beginning to catch on. My school eventually banned Pokemon cards like they did with Pogs. Ah yes, this was also the year I had a soccer ball fly into my face, which gave me a fear of soccer balls for the next 5-6 years. Ahh elementary school..

[Meg 368]

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim

  (Hi, Meg!) quote>

Hi Liv!

We  owned and operated a dairy farm to provide milk for Kraft Foods.  quote>

A bit of a side note but does your family still own the farm or did Kraft take it over?

The county road had been plowed, so my dad walked about a quarter mile (uphill both ways!) with me to the corner so that I could catch the bus and not miss the party. quote>

Glad to hear they have those two ways hills in other parts of the country.  

  Our favorite activities were riding our "banana seat" bikes quote>

I remember those!

My duties were fetching the cows at chore time, feeding them and the chickens, cleaning the chicken house (ick!), filling the woodbox, weeding the garden, helping to pick produce and can it, and other household tasks too humorous to mention.quote>

wow.   That's a lot for a little kid.  But my mom always did say that we had it easy.   We were in the suburbs so livestock wasn't an issue.

Originally posted by: astronelson

Grade 3 for me was 1999. Here in the southern hemisphere the school year isn't offset from the calendar year as it is for you strange people in the north.quote>

I never thought about that (duh!) but it makes sense.   We have summer in the middle of the year so the school runs from late August to mid June (more or less).    Since you have summer in December and January, you can have the school year during one calendar year.

Originally posted by: hyped_up_boy

My school eventually banned Pokemon cards like they did with Pogs.quote>

My school eventually banned cinnamon toothpicks.   A couple of kids were allergic to them so the principal decided they were a bad thing.

[Barbarossa 51]

.

  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

I don't remember 3rd grade. Well, except for that incident with the baby coconuts...

Barbarossaquote>

If you mentioned that, it must be worth telling, or is it so embarrassing that it blocked your memory of the rest of the year?quote>

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim

Yes, baby coconuts are rather intriguing; do tell. 

quote>

Let's just say that law enforcement does not look kindly on interfering with city busses, especially when they are in motion during rush hour.  But no permanent damage was done and the city let it drop. 

I do remember a few other things from 3rd grade, but in reality, I was in shock most of that year.  I had just moved to Hawaii from Oklahoma and I was an extremely naive and somewhat sheltered kid (and gravitated towards the delinquents).  I didn't understand half of what all the other kids were blabbering, since Pidgin was almost another language to me.  I had also never seen so many non-whites/blacks in my life.  In fact, I think I was in love with just about every local girl I saw.  I also recall living in a hotel for several months while my mother looked for a place and a job, before we moved to a 47' sailboat in Alawai Harbor.  There are a few other uninteresting tidbits like sea fishing, my first girlfriend in HI, catching my first octopus, and being fascinated by those big, transparent jellyfish.

Barbarossa

EDIT:  Oh, yeah, I also remember when my mom started dating Tom Selleck's stuntman from Magnum PI.

quote>

You were 7 or maybe 9 years old?  A little young to be noticing girls, but in the tropics ....

Did you learn to sail that big boat?  I wouldn't think you could handle it alone.  What kind of rig did it have?  At 47 feet it could have been anything:  sloop, cutter, ketch, yawl, schooner.  And you lived aboard in HI?  Lucky sod.  What an envied childhood you must have had.

[Duke87 1,070]

Originally posted by: hyped_up_boy

My school eventually banned Pokemon cards like they did with Pogs.quote>

Hmm... I don't recall my school ever banning pogs. Or pokemon cards, but I was in middle school by the time that craze hit.

I do, however, remember being in 4th or 5th grade and having my school ban Tomagachi and their American ripoff, Giga Pets.

My high school then had a ban on Walkmans which nobody obeyed and wasn't really enforced (the iPod didn't start to catch on until I was in 11th or 12th grade and hadn't replaced portable CD players until I was in college). They also banned cell phones, which was similarly ignored.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

One of the things about growing up in the 1940's was that all these electronics issues didn't exist.  When I was in grade 1, one of the kids did bring in his pet skunk, which was not descented.  Needless to say, he was sent home with it.  Whew.  That's about the only incident I remember from Grade I.

Electonics in those days came on 22 inch racks or larger, and were not portable.  One of the guys I knew in high school had a portable electonic flash with a lead-acid battery pack that weighed about twenty pounds.  The only portable sound you could carry was your voice or an occasional band instrument.  Singing around a bonfire was a usual activity.  Computers existed in places like MIT and Blechly Park, but were massive, often water cooled, and externally programmed using peg boards.  Thank heavens for Dr. Von Neuman.

[Meg 368]

I remember that my second grade teacher used to tie this one kid to his chair.  He had problems staying in his seat so she would get rope and tie him.   Once he undid the ropes so she locked him in the bathroom.   She also put masking tape over her nose whenever she had to write with magic marker.

[Livin in Sim 83]

Wow, this thread is cool.  I love to read all the different experiences.

Originally posted by: Meg

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim

  (Hi, Meg!) quote>

Hi Liv!

We  owned and operated a dairy farm to provide milk for Kraft Foods.  quote>

A bit of a side note but does your family still own the farm or did Kraft take it over?quote>

No, and no.  We sold the farm when my folks retired to some folks who were going to use it for a weekend place.  But that must not have panned out, because it appears to be back in operation as a farm.  (Yay for small farmers!)  It's hard to tell if it is still a dairy farm, but probably so.  It was quite an undertaking to work with Kraft.  They inspected twice a year and were very fussy about the condition of the barn and milk house.  Also, IIRC, farmers were paid according to the amount of butter fat the milk contained.

wow.   That's a lot for a little kid.  But my mom always did say that we had it easy.   We were in the suburbs so livestock wasn't an issue.quote>

Oh, it wasn't all that bad.  I escaped from arising at 5 to fetch the cows for morning chores.  My brother did that, and then my dad.  When it was too cold and snowy they stayed in the barn or nearby.  I also had help with the cow feeding and the wood.  But the chickens were my own, and I sold eggs as well.

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Let's just say that law enforcement does not look kindly on interfering with city busses, especially when they are in motion during rush hour.  But no permanent damage was done and the city let it drop.  quote>

Aha.  Pictures tiny coconuts rolling around the bus.  

I had just moved to Hawaii from Oklahoma...quote>

Cool.

EDIT:  Oh, yeah, I also remember when my mom started dating Tom Selleck's stuntman from Magnum PI.quote>

Selleck's double ...super cool.  WTG, Mom.  Was he nice?

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Yes, but Barbarossa, did you become a rag picker?

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Originally posted by: Barbarossa

Originally posted by: N_O_Body

Yes, but Barbarossa, did you become a rag picker?quote>

Clarification is in order.  I don't understand the question.  Why would I dig through other's discards, and how does that even relate to 3rd grade?

Barbarossa

quote>

Well, if you don't know that rather humourous term for a sail yachtsman, I assume you did not.  Up here, at least, the boating community is divided into two generally friendly camps:  The stink-potters who have only engines; and the rag-pickers whose boats also have sails.  I guess I was stretching out a back-hand to someone who may have been a yacht sailor, but you don't seem to fill the bill.  By the way, my last boat was a Bayfield 29 foot sailing cutter.  Sold it in 1991.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa