Year Six

Six. Huh? Apparently I played soccer when I was six, and I was good at it. Though, I now blame the soccer for the piss poor condition of the cartilage in my knees. Damn Pele! I also apparently took the camera man real serious when he said to say cheese. I look almost pained. And why the sweat pants underneath the shorts? On the bright side, when can I start wearing sweat pants again? Is it at thirty because then I'm pumped about thirty.

This second picture is, (presumably not all the damn things have dates)from when I was six as well. But the great thing about this picture is how it ties together my quest for a man cave with my childhood. In previous posts, (insert imaginary link here) I talked about my desire to have a nice warm basement with a thick rug or at the very least, a polar bear skin. And now I realize why that quest was so ingrained in my memory. There I am, lying not just on a white polar bear themed rug, but I'm also on top of a beautiful and dense rug. The sort of rug that can store memories even better than pictures. Why in the hell did we get hardwood floors? Our unborn children will never lie on the floor with such glee. They'l lie on the floor and get splinters.

Positives-First grade. Great year. Great teacher. You're still at an age where people can believe in you, and you believe you have the ability to turn it all around. It's not quite like sitting in a cube shredding paper and then filling out a job application. A bit of hope still reigns.

Negatives-Not too much really. You're still the quiet kid in class but you've got a couple of friends. A teacher who smiles at you in the sort of way that makes you believe you're special. You remember one day, helping her son to put chairs up in the classroom. You remember him crying because he got his first A-. You remember trying to think just what the heck the big deal was, handwriting was a C plus on the best of days. But then again, now that kid is going to be a doctor and the best you could do is write him a crappy poem about it. Maybe you should have cried when you got a C? Who knows? Kids are dumb like that.

You remember tether ball. Who the hell invented tether ball? You remember the kids who cheated and stood over the line to keep from getting out. You never did that. A few years later you'll start doing that sort of thing. It hasn't occurred to you yet to win any way but honestly. It's a good year. Towards the end you start playing football. You discover that you are fast. You discover that this gives you the kind of street cred at school that you had craved the year before. You associate these two things.

You do well in school because people ask you to. You enjoy making them happy. Your handwriting is still crappy but you've ditched the glasses. You can see the board just fine, and now the other kids don't make fun of you. It's good to be six.