Fourth Grade

Fourth Grade was such a rough year for me! I was in Mr. Schmidle's class and seemed to butt heads at least on a weekly basis. Mr. Schmidle also worked as a police officer at night time, so he ran a tight ship. He brought in his uniform to show us so we could know exactly what a police uniform looked like, which was pretty cool to see up close.

The best part about that year was the wall of books on the left side of the class room. Mr. Schmidle had everything on that shelf from Ramona Quimby Age 8 to Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing and Matilda. We could pick one to read during silent reading time, or Mr. Schmidle would pick out one to read to the class. We loved class reading time, because he did all the voices of all the characters differently. He had a way of roping you into the reading so you couldn't help but want to find out what was happening next.

One day when a classmate was being particular obnoxious and disruptive (refused to stay in his seat) Mr. Schmittle pulled the boy's chair over to the metal book shelf and handcuffed him to it. The boy had remain there until lunch. Most of the class was scared of Mr. Schmidle after that, and I was one of them.

This was also the year of my first crush. We sat in alphabetic order and a few desks over was Michael Ciezlack. He had an identical twin brother named RJ, but to me he wasn't half as cute as his brother. I didn't really talk to Michael much, and he probably had no idea I liked him, but I was infatuated with him the entire year. He played basket ball in the community league with his brother and best friend Chris Ciezki. His father was a volunteer fireman at night time and I thought that was pretty cool too.

Karen also had a crush this year (although in her case she claimed she was madly in love). She was Tony Fisher's girlfriend and they ended up getting married at recess one day. It was back in the woods behind the school were we weren't aloud to go, so I didn't attend although she wanted me to be the maid of honor. It was devastating to miss, but I didn't want to break the rules and get in trouble. They got divorced a week later, so I figured it was for the best that I didn't break the rules after all.

This year for music class we all got to learn how to play the recorder. Since I already had one (a Christmas gift one year), I got to bring in my bright yellow one, instead of having to use the black and white ones you could buy from the school. I thought my recorder was the coolest and loved that it was different than everyone else's. I wasn't very good at it, but I thought the recorder was a fun change from having to sing. One week it went missing, and although I searched my room and the house I couldn't find it. Mr. Schmittle made me write sentences on the black board "I will not forget my recorder" 100 times while the class went to the music lessons.

I couldn't find the recorder again the next week, so again I was writing sentences while the class went to lessons. After the third week my parents decided it must truly be lost, and they ended up buying me a new one. So I finally could go to music classes agin! Several months later I magically found the recorder in the laundry closet (I think one of my sisters took it and hid it from me). So at that point I got to choose which recorder to use.

I ended up writing sentences pretty frequently, since I was an awful speller. I practically failed my tests each week regardless of how hard I studied. Later in life I realized I'm probably a little dyslexic, which I'm sure didn't help at all. To this day I still have to stop and think when I spell sycamore or special (not hard words, but I always superimpose the letters). I should probably get tested, but at this point in life I'm not sure there's a whole lot they can do for me.

Mr. Schmidle asked me to sit beside Elizabeth Reilly to help her focus in class. Her parents were getting a divorce, and she was having such a hard time doing well in school. She was one of the popular girls, and had a ton of fun, but it was hard to try to help her. We became friends and it became even harder to get her to focus. Eventually Elizabeth was so distracting to my school work, that we were moved apart so I could better focus on class and not chat during school.

Fourth Grade was the year we had "The Change of Life" class. Although I remember learning all about periods when Elise Walri went through this class, and again in great detail when we had this lesson in school, I never remember my mom talking to me about periods. I felt so grown up after learning about the changes we would soon be going through, that Karen and I decided we should probably start wearing pads just in case we started our periods. This was quickly put to an end when Karen's mom found herself running out of pads at an unusually quick rate.

Around this time I also got pretty devious! Sheila and I were sharing a room, and I would make up all kind of crap to tell her. I had her convinced we had a year supply of dehydrated water, I told her our bedroom really belonged to me and she had to ask permission to come in. To this day Sheila will ask me "Do you remember when you told me xxxxx? I just realized that wasn't true!"

But she did her fair share of annoying me right back. Sunday mornings she would wait until I got dressed and she would put on the closest thing she had to my outfit so we would match. If I then changed, she would also change to match. It was so frustrating! She would constantly steal my toys and clothing, eat my candy she was the epitome of younger sister. Sometimes we would play together without any problems, but we did an awful lot of fighting.