A few nights ago I was laying with my 8 year old and we were having our nightly chat. I asked her how many weeks of school she had left and she said, "Just 5." "Oh my gosh, then you will be in the 4th grade." She was like, "Yeah, I'll be the oldest in the school." Their elementary goes up to 4th grade and the middle school is 5-8th grade. So after next year I'll be dropping her off at the middle school. Holy Hell. My kids are getting to the age where I can actually remember being their age very vividly, which is so cool and weird. She asked me to tell her a story (like she always does) and I asked her what about. "When you were in 4th grade." I thought for a minute and laughed to myself. "Okay. Well, my fourth grade teacher was a very plump woman and she had short, red, curly hair. She always wore pumps but she had really fat feet and the there would be a big fat bubble coming out of her shoes, like she tried to squeeze them in and they were too tight." My daughter laughed. She really did have fat feet. I used to watch the fat bubble around in her shoes when I should have been paying attention to the math lesson. It was very distracting. "I was very afraid of her because she was often cross but she was okay if you did what you were supposed to. She had the desks lined up in alphabetical order by our last name. I was near the back of the class and I sat in front of this boy named David. David was nice but he was one of those kids that ate glue, paper, pencil erasers and shavings. His desk was always in disarray. What I remember about David was that his nose was always running. I always had to pass papers back to him and he would smile at me with his big glasses, snot just dripping out of his nose, pencil eraser residue around his mouth and I would be grossed out." She laughed, "Really?" "Seriously, this is a true story." "The teacher would always yell at David and tell him to stop eating glue. I felt bad for him. One day the teacher asked David to come up to her desk and he was standing directly in front of her. She was talking to him about something and all of a sudden he let out a huge sneeze right in her face. Snot went everywhere on her face and everything. She paused for a minute,in shock. She turned red as a tomato. It looked like steam was going to come out of her ears. She growled under her breath, "David, blow your nose and go sit down." He did and then walked back to his desk all dejected looking. It was pretty classic." My daughter giggled - "Mom, that's gross." It was.
I thought about David for a minute. He was one of those kids that didn't have it easy in school. I hope that David is out in the world somewhere - good looking, cut, driving a Benz, married to a smokin hot wife with some obnoxiously smart and good looking kids. I wish that for all the kids who get dealt a crappy set of cards.
So, my daughter will be in the 4th grade. What a fun time that is. It's old enough to start being aware of the world, kids that age have a great sense of humor but are still pretty innocent. Boys aren't really in the picture yet (uggh-boys better stay away from my daughters for another 10 years). Fourth grade is mostly uncomplicated. I wish it could stay that way always.
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