Off to school

And so it was that I went off to school. Sacred Heart catholic school. We wore uniforms and somewhere there is a picture of me with braids and wearing a red blouse with white polka dots and red panties and a navy blue jumper. I know, the panties part is just too much information but they were RED! Daddy drove me somewhere every morning and from there I rode in this van to school. Since I was the youngest they made me sit on the wheel cover in the back instead of a regular seat. It was a very hard and bumpy ride. Sometimes my parents would go away for the weekend and I would stay overnight at the school in the dorm. I remember that we had cocoa for breakfast and it always had this "scum" floating on top...yuck...and I don't remember us having anything else except macaroni and cheese, but I'm sure we must have. One weekend we went on a field trip in the woods and came upon a fire tower. It had metal steps that went up forever. I was scared to death. Whether or not my fear of heights arrived on that day, I do not know.

Walking to the library

I have been an avid reader since I was four. One of my favorite places, when I was little, was the library. You can google the Clift Rodgers free library in Marshfield Hills and it looks very much the same now as it did then. Remarkably, it is one of only a few self sufficient libraries in the country. There are no computers, no internet connections and no library cards. There was one room with childrens' books. I had to get my mother to give the librarian permission for me to read books in the adult sections of the library because I had read every single childrens book they had. Needless to say, I was quite precocious and was enrolled in first grade at Sacred Heart school in Plymouth at the age of five. None of that pre-k or kindergarten stuff for me.