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Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Third Grade

Tonight the girls asked me if I loved being in third grade when I was a kid. Um, no. But I couldn't say that to them. They are a nervous wreck about the first day of school as it is.

"Of course! Third grade was awesome!"

But it wasn't. It was my worst year ever. Third grade was when you learned multiplication tables and I was terrible at them. We had a whole wall display with numbers from 0 to 12 listed vertically, a mural of the sky and we each had a paper cut out of a hot air balloon that we had decorated and put our names on. All of our hot air balloons started on zero and every day we took a timed quiz. If we passed, then our teacher (her name was Miss Martin and she had long blond hair) would make a big production out of moving our hot air balloon up to the next number. And then the next day the whole process repeated itself, taking the next quiz, and moving your hot air balloon. It was the first thing that we did every morning. So, needless to say, we all studied like maniacs the night before and then crammed every little math fact that we could on the bus ride to school. We walked down the halls chanting, "Two times two is four! Two times three is six! (etc. etc.)," ready to kick that quiz's rear end.

I did fine until I encountered the 8's. The 8's were not very friendly to me and by Christmas, we were not even on speaking terms. Week after week, my hot air balloon stayed on the 8's. I watched in sorrow as everyone else passed me. I gave up on math all together. I hated it. I hated multiplication. I hated hot air balloons. I hated Miss Martin. And I hated 3rd grade.

And so, there was no way that I could answer the girls' question honestly this evening. But, we have practiced multiplication all summer, so I think that they will be just fine. :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOOK AT ME! I'm out in the part of the universe that has INTERNET! I can READ YOUR BLOG!

I'm okay. No, seriously. I'll be fine.

Love this post. Love the pics of the girls. And I remain horrified, as always, that school starts so freakin early in Georgia.

Hope the year has a beautiful start!
xxoo...jules

Unknown said...

How in the world do you remember all of that about 3rd grade?? I don't even remember what state/country I was in that year. Seriously.

Angie said...

Jules! I am so glad to have you back! I'm sending you an email.

Joy - it was so terribly scarring, that's how I remember. Of course, so was the ex-nun, Miss Hafner, that I had in 2nd grade. I had a much better year in 4th grade with Mrs. Irwin. :)

Mark Fennell said...

Yeah, 3rd grade sucked. Between my poor math skills and slow reading, I managed to get more than a handful of grades below a C-... Ms. Thompson required parental signatures on all D and F grades. Luckily, I sat next to a book case and could stuff the papers with bad grades behind the book case. I remember having great gobs of trash when we cleaned out our desks for the Christmas break.

The year was topped off when I accompanied a few of my classmates to a little room in the library where we took special tests. In hindsight they were tests to see if we needed "special" help.

By some stroke of luck, I made it to the 4th grade.

Jessica said...

Dude, I moved away when you were in 3rd grade. That was probably your problem. Trauma. Completely understandable. And mom had to buy me a record because I couldn't do multiplication tables.