(Originally published 22 April 2007, am republishing…well…have to get back into blogging. Throwback Thursday is as a good excuse as any!)
Mrs. Halleberg was my grade two teacher. On parent’s night, each student had to make up an individual star made of construction paper. Mrs. Halleberg would then write adjectives to describe her students and put them up on the bulletin board in the hallway. She wrote ‘Chatterbox’ on mine and ‘Motor Mouth’ on my friend Lorraine’s. I guess your individual development really doesn’t change much after your first five years–hence, thirty years later I am nick-named Princess Donkey.
I’ve kept this character sketch that a fellow classmate wrote of me in Mrs. Halleberg’s grade two class.
The great thing is: thirty years later, I still have friends from Grade 2: Lorraine and Michelle. Lorraine is my first close long-time friend to have a baby (Baby Betty). Michelle lives in or around Wakefield and is studying to become a nurse. We had another friend, Winnie Wong. I don’t know where she is now though. I think Lorraine says she is in Toronto.
I did, however, say hello to my former classmate who wrote my character sketch this year when I was home at Christmas. I found out that he and wife were living just up the road from my parents. They’ve had a baby too. I had three weeks to kill in Whitehorse this year and them up–out of the blue–and asked if they wanted to go skiiing. I didn’t think they would remember me–but they did. I told them that I had this character sketch that he had written about me–and that I am positively horrified that in grade two, my hobbies included doing chores around the house.
