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Roberta_ -> RE: you know you're a 70s kid when .... (9/4/2008 4:41:42 PM)
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When my mom decided to work outside the home my friends all thought we were in need of money. We weren't. Dad made very good money.
When my mom went to work, that added more chores for my siblings and myself. My older brother negotiated with my parents because our allowance was a quarter a week. Our friends were getting .50 to .75 cents a week and we were doing more chores than they were. (Back then you had to do chores to get money and if you needed more money, you offered to do more chores.) When my allowance was bumped up to $5/month and his was only bumped up to $4/month, he renegotiated and wound up with more chores. [:D] We were now the top allowance earners in our circle of friends. [:)]
My parents had no problem with us riding public transportation to and from school. However, they would not pay for it. If we chose to use it, we paid for it with our allowance. They saw no reason to pay for a ride when we could walk. The longest walk was junior high - just over 3 miles one way. The shortest walk was elementary school which is just about .5 miles away. The high school is almost a mile. No sense spending .15 cents when you don't have to.
School lunches were another extravagance that my parents saw no need to pay for. They gave us a dime a day for milk and provided us with plenty of sandwich makings, fruits and veggies and snacks to make our own lunches. That was cheaper than blowing a whole quarter on a school lunch. We could buy our own lunch out of our allowance.
When my parents found out that I wasn't buying milk because it upset my stomach, they stopped giving me a dime a day and I had to pay them back for all the dimes that I accepted through out the school year. Thankfully it was towards the beginning of the year.
None of us were allowed to have a driver's license until we knew how to drive a stick and how to change a tire and graduated from high school.
We all made our own lunches almost every day. My older brother took the bus home from school every day. My sister always seemed to have a friend who she could ride with. My younger brother rode the bus both ways. I walked, unless it was raining. On rainy days, I took the bus to school but would walk home. If I had a special art project that I was bringing home from school, then I'd ride the bus.
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A Week in the Life of a '70s Junior Higher.
I hated art. I couldn't (and still can't) draw or paint pictures. One art project was very interesting. We were told a day in advance that we were going to make statues. We would get plaster of Paris, lacquer and newspaper. Two colors of paint and a theme would be provided the next day. Art was supposed to be an "easy A." This was the first art assignment of my junior high career. I had all the creativity of a .... well, I don't know. I couldn't think of a good metaphor. My sinking heart bypassed my stomach and went straight to my toes!
At supper, while we were all sitting down at the table eating and talking, my mother mentioned that her brother and his family were coming over for Thanksgiving. As kids, we loved his sense of humor and his overall warm personality. Not that we'd ever taken a vote, but I'm sure if we did, he would've been our favorite uncle. I'm sure the fact that he worked for Hershey's would not have played into the factor at all. [:D]
That's it!! I'll make a candy bar!
The next day in second period art class, two boxes were passed around. The first one contained slips with colors written on them. We were to blindly pull two colors out of the box. We were told that those who didn't pull white out of the box were lucky because they could just not paint that part of their statue and it would be white. We were also told that we could mix our colors to make a variety of different colors or shades, but we had to use only the colors we drew from the box. We wouldn't get extra points for it, but we could have more variety that way. My colors were black ........ and ..... you guessed it ...... white! While the rest of the class got a variety of colors they could make, I got black, white and grey. The thought of a grey candy bar didn't sound appealing and I'd never heard of a black and white one. Hey, how about a black and white TV?!
While I was pondering how to make silver rabbit ears, dials and even a remote control with a cord attached to the TV out of black and white, the second box came around. The box with our themes in it. I reached in and pulled out a slip of paper with the words "Something God made" written on it. Even this theologically limited, San Francisco Bay Area, public school girl knew that God didn't make grey candy bars or black and white TVs. Even color TVs with cordless remote control didn't seem like something The Almighty would concern Himself with. We had to tell the teacher what we were going to make. We could give her two things we'd thought of and she'd tell us which one we could do. We couldn't do something that someone else was already doing. I thought of an elephant or a Dalmatian. The teacher told me that no one else was doing either one so I had a choice. Nice choice. I had to tell her the next day.
The summer before, my parents got divorced and we moved to a new home, gave up our beautiful boxer, calico cat and my rabbits, but we stayed in the same school district. This former Navy brat was happy about not having to change schools again. Actually, I did change schools. My older brother went from ninth to tenth grade. No school change there. My younger sister went from third to fourth and my younger brother went from second to third. No school changes there either. I went from sixth to seventh grade. Only two of the kids from my elementary school went to this junior high school. All the ones that I was friends with went to the new school because of where they lived. Big change!!
Huge change that boiled down to a choice between an elephant and a Dalmatian. I worried about this decision until third period PE. Then I started thinking about the silly schools that were concerned that a girl who walks six miles a day to and from school isn't getting enough exercise. Then I went back to worrying about it.
I arrived at school 10 minutes early as usual to do my English homework that was due that day. This class was so easy that I didn't see a need to get to school any earlier to do it, unless I needed to go to the library, then I gave myself 15 minutes. The homework assignment was the same as it was every Thursday so far. Write a short story about whatever theme the teacher had picked. The theme was "Something on a Farm that Reminds You of This Class." I spent a whopping four minutes on that one. If your story was read aloud, the class had to guess what you were. Our answers were written on the back. The author of the paper would tell each person if they were right or wrong and possibly give a hint or two.
By the time Mr. S had greeted our first period English class with "Guten Morgen! Oh, I'm sorry I thought this was my German class!" for the 20th consecutive time in as many days, I had made my decision! The Dalmatian, simply because it sounded like less work. After all, Dalmatians are smaller than elephants.
It's too late to make a long story short, so let me explain something about Mr. S. He was clueless. Almost everyday after class, at his request, we would have a talk about my lack of effort in my English assignments. He obviously hadn't read my transcripts from elementary school. The reason for me being in his advanced English class was pretty clear. I was advanced! English was a class that I aced! It was beyond me why I never received a grade higher than a B- in his class. On my transcripts, in black and white (those colors again!), it was clearly spelled out (to me anyway) that I didn't have to put effort into English. The day before he asked me how much effort I put into my other classes. I sarcastically explained my art situation. I guess he didn't catch the sarcasm because he told me that he wished I would put that much time, effort, thought and creativity into my English assignments. [8|]
There were lots of kids who never had their paper read aloud. Some of them wanted their papers read aloud. I never cared one way or the other. Maybe that was because my paper was read every Friday. Not sure why I thought this Friday would be any different? After Mr. S read my story, the class took several wrong guesses before Mr. S asked me for a hint. I told them it was something that came from a cow. One kid guessed chocolate milk. I'm not sure how he got into an advanced English class. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how that kid got into his shoes everyday. However, I did let the class know that he guessed the right color.
Until that day, I never knew that you could actually watch the color drain from a person's face. As Mr. S turned the paper over, I learned that a person's face could also get as red as a traffic light. A traffic light about ready to explode!
Before I go any further, I'd like to clarify that the words I used were "cow patty" and not the words many of my peers used in the hallways. To my relief, Mr. S did not request a meeting after class. Things were fine until a student helper gave my art teacher a note to give to me.
As I sat teary-eyed in the Principal's office, I was thankful that Dad was coming to get me. Both Mom and Dad have a sense of humor, but Dad is quicker to find the humor. He would be laughing so much that he wouldn't be able to punish me. He and Mom both laughed. So did my siblings. So did company. I could hear them. From my room, where I spent the next month.
At least the teacher and the Principal struck up a deal with me. I explained that I hated it when the teacher came in and said "Gluten Morgen" everyday because it was 1978 and that joke was as old as he was. (I know he had to be at least 24 or 25!) He promised not to do that anymore and he didn't.
I got to write "Guten Morgen" 700 times. I promised to apply myself more, rewrite the offending story and accept a D on it. I did. I don't think I was as good at negotiating as my older brother was.
My Dalmatian received an A++. The bus driver offered me $2.50 for him. I told her that my mother had to see him first. He lived a long and comfortable life in my mother's living room. Unfortunately, one of my mother's dogs thought he was a toy and chewed his guts out. (Think of the story I could have written about that in seventh grade English!) He lived until 1995. His name was Patty.
ETA- if you read all of this you definately have the patience of a '70s kid!
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