Blaise Fanning

1970-1979

I'm likely going to use all 8000 characters with this stream of consciousness.

"lower pod"
a duck is a duck. helicopters and gingerbread. may i come in? seven is magic. the dog next door. with skies and wings. all sorts of things. x-ray folders with math assignments glued to them. homonyms tacked up above mrs. lucas' blackboard. ms callahan turning into mrs damon and confusing me for about a year. french class with mrs yunta ("quatre-vingt is eighty? that means 4 twenties"). painting my box red and blue and then sweet flourescent colors. digging in the big sand pit near the woods at recess. missing the bus because i was watching cartoons. learning mary poppins songs. convincing the second-grader (name withheld) to streak across the pod before school. getting in huuuuge trouble and having to sit ouside the "upper pod" every day before school. checking out books from the library from sr mary grace. being terrified of sr alvera when she was the principal. the sweet geodesic dome that was built out of cardboard boxes. my locker in the back hallway. good king wenceslas from the little "carols" book. some class where we had to do a "junior jumble" and getting totally beaten by anne fritzlen on the final answer (the clue was "turn loose" the answer was "unscrew"). loving the cafeteria pizza. having no idea what "clean sweep" class was about in the upper pod. writing a "cat in the hat" xylophone musical for music/singing class. getting a headband for being "poet of the pod" in second grade. playing "dopey" in snow white (i was embarrassed to say my line "she's mighty purty"). learning all of the lyrics to supercallifragalisticexpiallidocious.

"upper pod"
kevin cauley. jay davis. the green "house" for quiet reading. having "seven alone" read to us in circle. journals - i distinctly remember seeing how little i could get away with writing - my minimum was "it was a day". contact paper to decorate my box. "mix and make" class. learning bases with the help of those little blocks. learning metric. being somewhere in the back of the performance orchestra. mme carter as our french teacher (with a long walk to the middle school). david silverforb and sr susan. sr lucy in the reading lab. sra. playing mastermind. riding to school with mr carr. thinking that locker hall was the coolest thing ever. looking out those little windows at the corners of the pods on a rainy day. playing kickball in the front parking lot. playing football at lunch. building the covered wagon on a saturday. private lessons with suzuki book 1-3 before school. wondering if i'd be the only person who couldn't take "me, growing up" because i was too young to take the class even when i finished fifth grade. spelling class with those colored cards. avoiding the cafeteria "chicken fried steak". mini-courses on fridays. the last time i had decent handwriting. playing that "authors" card game. parker weil and those ridiculous toe socks ;) walking to french class with anne in the upper school and blowing my lunch money on candy bars from the bookstore on the way back - getting in huuuuuge trouble for that. tornado drills, which were the only reason that i had ever seen the convent. sr elizabeth anne and the music room with the waterbed and the blacklight and my glowing white/purple shoelaces.

"middle school"
then middle school hit...locker in locker hall!!! pennies, pendulums and psychokinesis. middle school cubbies. john stanforth tying my shoelaces together when he caught me running. miserable extemporaneous failure in troy's "speech" class - the topic was "you are a harlem globetrotter's basketball" and i stammered for five solid minutes. orchestra rehearsal in the main hall. jazz band alto sax with eileen and chrissy every monday night. "winds and weather" fieldtrip - somehow we went sailing in (the slocombs' ???) sailboat somewhere in kansas. diagramming sentences in mae hunter's class. playing the saxophone for the big spring musical review. basketball with wally hartsfield and jay davis in the gym every 4th period, while gymnastics class went on up on the mezzanine. summer violin lessons with sr patrice in the convent. training rats. racing rats down the upper school hallway when john was sick. tim mcqueeny "willing" me his comb at the end of 6th grade (you're still on the "list", buddy...) susan lambert saving my ASS by giving me a spare reed at some performance at that church-like building at wornall and red bridge road.

those painted cardboard music stands with the glitter "L" on them that we used in jazz band. that mattel handheld football game with a total of...what?...24 LEDs and three buttons. being really proud of my white painter's pants. buying snacks from that PTA-type fundraising thing every day near my locker after school - my favorite was something like granola/strawberry frozen yogurt ice cream sandwiches. (when i have those forgot-my-locker-combination dreams, they are always for that locker near the end of locker hall.) writing bible books on the board in mae's room during "electric bible" class.

being very flattered to be invited to verl's advanced basketball class. big evening mob trip to "worlds of fun". gymnastics girls doing handsprings across the mats laid out in the main hall after school. reading "the invisible man" in that gorgeous upper school library. getting a really good evaluation from Nelda for Literary Cavalcade at the same time I got a really terrible evaluation from Nelda for English II. I distinctly remember Rob Leigh naming the group of us who did well on a particular test as "The Testicles". That might have had something to do with it. The smell of dittoed handouts. the TERRIBLE smell that poured out of the upper school smoking lounge. watching "the lottery" one friday afternoon. a 1.5 day december "broken boundaries" canoe trip that ended with me, angela maxwell, marty brown, and travis flynn going for a swim and the whole group of us becoming crazy obsessed with stupid sexual jokes on the way home (that's actually still a problem for me... ;) a hiking trip on the "big piney" where we went down into a cave (in the ground) and saw SERIOUS dark. being the only person in the world who didn't own a down vest. playing the baritone sax on "takin it to the streets" in jazz band. mr, carr's nephew "chuck" telling us about the perfect murder that he'd planned...always worried about that one...

opening the locked auditorium doors by moving the bolt with a pencil eraser. playing "a bunch of shamrocks" by heart in the main hall. the polished driftwood "lovers" sculpture outside the upper school office. "putt, putt, go, go". the (failed) rna transfer of learning and the skinner boxes. algebra book with a spaceship? on the front. learning "the pink panther" on the piano from hill hughes. being (briefly) the concertmaster of the performance orchestra after sarah dahlgren took off. reggie simms walking around with drumsticks. jazz band trip to st louis and a trip up in the arch. carpooling occasionally with the baldwin clan.