Wow, I blew my blog anniversary once before, but not by this many days. Thirteen years and 11 days ago (on December 16, 2007 to be exact), I started this blog.
At age 13, Daughter Number Three (the person) was in 8th grade and had what was probably the most unfortunate school photo ever taken of her. I remember distinctly after the brief photo session that I thought it was going to be a great picture, so the result was all the more disappointing.
This was a time — 1972 — when all of the (white) girls had long, straight hair parted down the middle with no bangs, so I was in the midst of growing out my hair from always having had bangs. As you can see, I also have a widow's peak, so that center part is not something I can pull off, but I didn't know it then. And that's all without mentioning the ’70s fashion touches in my glasses and pointy collar, my manic expression, or the incipient pimples on my chin and forehead.
Ah, puberty. What a time. This was the year my school wouldn't let me take shop class because I was a girl but I also refused to take home economics, my first year taking a foreign language (French), and the time they marched us to Religious Ed classes during the school day, sending us to community volunteers based on our parents' religion (!). But it was also the year my classmates and I organized to protest the school changing middle school grades from numbers to letters. And when we held our mock 1972 presidential election, which resulted in 30 votes for Nixon, two for McGovern (me and one of my friends), and two for Gus Hall of the Communist Party.
For some reason, I don't have a report card saved for this year, so I can't give the usual information on my grades or number of absences, but I think I was relatively healthy and I did okay but not tremendously. I do remember I got less than an 80 in math the last quarter, because my mother made a deal with me that she wouldn't hassle me in the future as long as things stayed at 80 or above.
I remember by the end of 8th grade I wished I could move to a new town and start over in high school, but that was not to be. I had to continue for four more years with mostly the same people in my small town, and I will continue here at Daughter Number Three into year 14 as well.
My past anniversary posts, each with age-appropriate photographic evidence:
2 comments:
Congratulation on really many (as my kids used to say) years of blogging.
That photo: what was the photographer thinking?
He was probably thinking it had been a long day.
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