Recently while walking through Mason’s school I saw a bunch of papers titled “Memories of Shedeck” hanging in the hallways. On each one, some of the older kids (fifth and sixth graders) had shared some of their memories of Shedeck Elementary. As you know, I also attended fifth and sixth grades at Shedeck Elementary. Last fall I dedicated an entire week’s worth of updates to Shedeck memories. However, if I was only given a single piece of paper on which to jot down some Shedeck memories, it would have looked like this: I remember … “Brian Olea jumping and diving… (read more)

Neither of today’s stories have to do with that old portable building, but they’re both Shedeck-related and they’re two of my favorite stories from that era. The other one is a better story, but this one is such a strong memory that I wanted to post it as well. Throughout grade school (and especially elementary school) it was extremely rare for a student to lobby an idea and have it accepted by a teacher — so rare in fact that I can count the number of times it happened on one hand. For example, in ninth grade we were assigned… (read more)

Also in fifth grade, we studied superheroes. We read about the history of superheroes and comic books and so on. I don’t remember spending a lot of time on the subject. Perhaps it was just a week or two. As part of this mini-course, each student created their own superhero. Mine was a patriotic fellow named “Terc” who turned into “Super Terc” from time to time. I have no idea where I got the name Terc from — it sounds suspiciously like “Herc”, Hercules nickname from the cartoon that I used to watch before school. Patrick’s superhero was a cross… (read more)

One time in Mrs. Leatherwood’s second grade Gifted class, I had to create a commercial for a ficticious product. I invented Monster Marshmallows (“Marshmallows with a BITE!”) To create my marshmallows I bought a big bag of big marshmallows, dyed them with food coloring, and then created little accessories out of paper (eyes, horns, claws) to glue to them. The only problem with Monster Marshmallows was … they were delicious. By the time I was to perform my commercial, two-thirds of the monsters lie deep within my belly. At some point during my time at Shedeck Elementary, we received a… (read more)

In December of 1983, Mrs. Leatherwood organized a Christmastime “fantasy gift exchange.” It worked like most other gift exchanges do — everybody in class randomly picked the name of a fellow student and we were to give them a gift. The difference was, as this was a “fantasy” gift exchange, instead of buying the gifts we got to draw them on paper instead. The only limit to our gifts was our imagination. I can’t remember exactly who drew my name, but I specifically remember whose name I pulled: “Cammie Bruce”. In 1983 I was 1 of 3 fifth graders in… (read more)