Thursday, December 16, 2021

Fourteen Years in the DN3 Business

Daughter Number Three, the blog, is now a teenager. A high school student. Yes, this blog was begun on December 16, 2007.

As is my habit, I'm posting a photo of myself at that age. One of these years I'm going to have stop doing that... maybe after next year. 

Ninth grade was a year when my family didn't purchase my school portrait, since with four kids to buy for, we took turns in pairs. So this is me in the yearbook's French Club photo, which accounts for the halftone pattern. You can at least see that I had managed to grow out my hair, after my disastrous 8th grade photo.

My first year of high school was a major transition. I think it was the last time I gave a decent shot at trying to fit in, before giving up and just going with the geek flow. For instance, I remember I had a pair of what I perceived as fashionable brown and white platform shoes. They had white, crepe-like soles. What a dumb decision those were. I remember trying to move in them at marching band practice. Horrendous.

My grades for the year were so-so. We were assigned numbers rather than letters, and my yearly average (if I compute the total, which the school did not do) was 87.3 (or a B+). My main recollection is that the social studies teacher was a jerk who almost put me off the subject of history forever, which would have taken some doing. (Right?!) I got a 76 from him in the third quarter, with comments on my report card about missing assignments, poor test/quiz work, and wasting time. I know I wrote a paper about Dahomey (Benin) that he hated. I wish I could remember more about why he was so bad, but I've erased it.

I was pretty healthy, at least as far as absences go: 15 days in the year, none in the last quarter. Most likely my daily headaches had started at this point, though.

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My past anniversary posts, each with age-appropriate photographic evidence:

 

2 comments:

Michael Leddy said...

Congratulations on fourteen years in the blogosphere, DN3.

Your references to eighth grade and the first year of high school were enough to trigger an awkward memory for me. In eighth grade, we had a visit from the male high-school gym teachers — I think this was a boys-only assembly — and we were given to believe that every male went out for a sport in freshman year. I remember thinking, maybe even talking with friends, about figuring I could do wrestling. But I already knew it was never going to happen. That might have been the last time I tried to fit in.

Daughter Number Three said...

Hah! What an idea. They didn't tell girls that for sure.

I went out for field hockey in 11th grade. Second string only, so I never got to play in a real game. I don't know why I did it, though I liked the game pretty well, I guess. Maybe I was still trying to fit in, but I'm not sure.