Blogging Through The Years: Fifth Grade

by Ashley on November 25, 2009

I am blogging through all of my years in school–from Kindergarten through College. If you want to participate, write a post of your own! Previously: Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Fourth Grade.

crayons222

My mom and step-dad had gotten married the previous Spring, but it took a while for them to find a new house. We sold our house first and had to live in an apartment for a while until they bought a new one. It was the only time I ever lived in an apartment until I moved out on my own. We looked at a lot of houses. It was a tall order trying to find something with 5-6 bedrooms for all of us kids. We had our hearts set on one and then lost it. Then we had our hearts set on another and the ‘rents devastated us all by going with a super ugly house instead. When I say ugly, I really mean it. Different colored shag carpeting in every room–all of it stained by cat pee. There was an entire wall in the basement made of cork. Every window was covered with these really heavy flanel drapes that smelled like smoke. We all worked together to replace the carpet and paint every wall. When we finally moved in, it still wasn’t fashionable, but it was clean and there was room for everyone. Best of all, it was in the small town we’d all grown up in.

I had the cool teacher. He was this young guy, which was weird, because I’d never had a male teacher before. He’d had my brother as a student years before, so he knew my name already when I showed up in his class. I thought that made me cool. I still wasn’t a good student, but this teacher really encouraged me. I always had the feeling that he knew I could be doing a lot better than I was, which of course made me want to do better too.

After my success as Treasurer of the school in fourth grade, I decided to run for President in fifth. There were a lot of us running. I campaigned and did the whole thing. I ended up losing to the race to Brandy who always had the pony tail on top of her head. I was sad that I’d lost, but also incredibly relieved. If I’d won, I would have had to do things like lead student council meetings and stuff. I didn’t want to do any of that. I just wanted to win and give a speech.

As our big field trip of the year, my class and one other got to go to sleep away camp for a whole week. It was a mostly miserable experience. It rained the entire time, as it tends to do in Western Washington. Something happened to our cabin’s chaperone, so we were like the orphan group. My closest friend there cried every night. Another girl snored. The food was terrible and if you put your elbows on the table or didn’t properly ask someone to pass you the butter, then you had to get up and sing a song before you could eat at the next meal. I was never so happy than when my mom showed up that Friday to drive a car load of us kids home.

The elementary schools in my area had a deal with the middle schools that if you wanted to join band, then you could start in fifth grade and go to a middle school for a first period band class before getting bussed over to the elementary school for the normal school day. I have no idea why this sounded like such a good idea to me, but I really wanted to play the trombone. It just looked cool. My mom didn’t think I could carry a trombone and since we had a clarinet already in the house, that’s what I played by default. I didn’t take it very seriously. I just liked being part of the group of students who got to hang out at the middle school.

We got this new kid. His name was Bryce and he was in my class. I’m pretty sure I was taller than he was, but I thought he was cute. No one in my elementary school dated or anything. He was kind of a corrupting influence. There was this thing at a Skating Party where he told this girl Rachel that he liked me. I played hard to get, I guess, though unintentionally because I was just shy, and so he moved on to my friend Sandra. They were the only couple at our school. That is until the weirdest guy at our school decided that he liked me and started chasing me around at recess. I played hard to get on purpose that time and he eventually gave up.

Share and Enjoy: