April 10, 2010 - Chewed out by Mrs Thornburg

Sixth Grade Journal – March 21, 1995

FTC – Federal Trade Commission¹ AC – Alternating Current Est. – established Uhf. – Ultra High Frequency Pst. – Pacific Standard Time inc. – incorporated²

¹ – Seriously, a journal topic about abbreviations? Also, what reason does any sixth-grader have for knowing what the FTC stands for or what the Federal Trade Commission is?

² – This list seems so random, it makes me wonder if this topic was about figuring out what these abbreviations stood for instead of just listing abbreviations on our own.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 22, 1995

The jobs I hate are: Taking out garbage³, and going to school⁴.

³ – I didn’t really have that many chores, but taking out the garbage did make Sunday nights pretty lame. Of course, shortly after this I would have to mow our lawn using a stupid push mower. Now that was a job worth hating.

⁴ – It’s sad that kids don’t realize how awesome school is until they are done. I would love to spend eight hours a day with all of my friends five days a week. That would be a pretty great job.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 23, 1995

Today I have Advanced Youth Education⁵, a computer class, at 3:30 p.m. and I am going to the Y.M.C.A.⁶ Today is a terrible day, just for accidentely spilling some water, I got chewed out by Mrs. Thornburg⁷, man, I really dislike her⁸.

⁵ – Next to this entry, Mrs Robertson wrote, “What kinds of things do you do?” I told you that it’s a computer class…what else do you need to know, lady? I don’t owe you any sort of play-by-play of my life outside of the classroom!

⁶ – I did a lot of stuff at the Y back in those days. Also, thank goodness that I eventually dropped the habit of putting periods in-between initials in an acronym.

⁷ – Mrs Thornburg was the principal of my elementary school, and she was not my biggest fan. I don’t particularly remember this incident, and it probably didn’t only involve me accidentally spilling water, but it is likely that I got in trouble without really doing much of anything to deserve it. She was a real tyrant.

⁸ – I love that Mrs Robertson read this entry (or at least appeared to, since she commented on my Advanced Youth Education schedule) but didn’t really seem to care that I flat-out stated that I disliked the principal. Brilliant.

Sixth Grade Journal – March 23, 1995

1) serve 2) ace⁹ 3) volley 4) set 5) match 6) point¹⁰ 7) match point 8) love¹¹ 9) forehand 10) backhand 11) net 12) let 13) out 14) fault 15) win¹²

⁹ – I have always been fascinated by power servers (and therefore, aces), but it was always the weakest part of my game when I actually played. On a side note, you may notice that this entry has the same date (March 23) as the one before it. This is not a typo, but rather one of the many mysteries of this blog that might never be solved.

¹⁰ – I’m not sure that I would consider “point” a tennis-specific word.

¹¹ – Could the scoring for tennis be any weirder? Could this list contain more words that pertain to other sports or even things outside of sports?

¹² – I guess maybe I shouldn’t be so picky.

Sixth Grade Journal – April 5, 1995

When I look at old photographs, I think of when¹³ my parents, my grandpa, and the early time in which they all were alive¹⁴.

¹³ – If it appears that this sentence got away from me just a little (and I think we can agree that it did), I feel relatively certain that this was the point when the train began sliding off the track.

¹⁴ – This entry is confusing and falsely tragic. At that time both my parents were still alive (and luckily still are now), but all of my grandparents who had been alive during my lifetime were also still alive. Weird.