M's first grade

Continuing with the journaling. Okay, I was 6 in first grade. I have a picture of me at Chuck E. Cheese for my birthday --I believe it was that year.
I remember from this school year that my teacher was Miss Rich. She was a young and very pretty blonde lady. The kids would ask if she was my mom because of her last name. Um, no. We didn't really get the Mrs. vs. Miss at that age. I remember my teacher being SUCH a nice teacher. I loved her.
This was the year that when my mom took me school shopping, we had to find some black jeans to go with a red/black/gray sweater vest I had and the red turtleneck that went under it. Very stylish. :) We could not find black jeans in the girls' section, so my mom went to the boys' section. How embarrassing. I remember trying the pants on in the store dressing room and being mortified that I was putting on boy pants. We ended up getting them and I think I just eventually got over the gender bending pants. :) I wore that outfit for my school pictures.
My good friends were Faith and Paige. They both must have moved after that year. Very sweet girls. There was a different but nice girl named Audrey in my class who I remember chewed on Silly Putty like it was gum one day outside at recess. I was a little grossed out because even if it worked like gum, it didn't seem like it would taste all that good. I turned down her offer to try it. I remember having a crush on Mark Y. that year. Crushes start early. Also, we changed classrooms once for some kind of activity and had to wait in line outside of the classroom. I saw tall Seth B. and had a 1st grade crush on him. The crush would repeat itself in the 6th grade. --Nice guy, good friend even through high school. There was a girl named Shantell G. in my class who would wear nice dresses, but pee her tights sometimes. I felt bad because she seemed nice but smelled like pee.
I took home a reading text book this year and forgot to return it. I found it in my room later and I still have the thing. I like the stories in it. I probably should have figured out a way to return it...
One memory that still bugs me from this year is....I went to the craft store Piece Goods with my mom and my sister. There was a bin of little maybe 5 cent whistles (bins were abundant in the 80's and very tempting for a kid, especially the button bins at the fabric stores). I took one. I stole it. My sister saw it in the car and accused me (rightly) of stealing it. I made up some lie about getting it at school, and she called me a liar (rightly). I don't remember actually using the stupid thing because I think I felt too guilty. That would be my one shop lifting experience, minus a few grapes as a kid, and I am still bugged that I didn't make that right somehow --as dumbe as that might sound. If Piece Goods exists still in Salt Lake, maybe I should head over one day when we are in town and give them a quarter for the whistle -with interest.
In the younger years of grade school there was this metal not so steep slide with a bar above it on the playground. Some jerk would sit at the top entrance and demand "payment" before you could go down. The fee was usually a rock.
I had a bit of an issue with reverting to sucking my thumb somewhere between kindergarten and 1st grade. I had never done it before, but there I was with a horrible habit. I remember trying to suck my thumb behind a text book on my desk once, but I decided that it was way too hard to try to be discreet about it and stopped doing it at school. At home once when I was watching TV on our yellow striped lounge chair while sucking the thumb, my dad came in from doing yard work. You have to understand that this was in the "Dad is Terrifying" decade. I immediately ripped my thumb from my mouth. He asked me, "Were you sucking your thumb?"
I took a moment to think of a response. I knew I might have a chance of getting out of trouble if I lied, but then I remembered what we had learned about recently in school. I had heard the story of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and being honest about it to his father. Everything turned out okay because he told the truth. So I told the truth.
"Yes."
Then came the spankings.
I decided George Washington was full of crap.
I think it was somewhere around the time my dad put bandaids on my thumb that I thought I would show him and start sucking my pointer finger instead when he wasn't looking. It was uncomfortable. The whole thing was more of a nuisance than a comfort at that point, so it stopped.
As far as memories about my siblings...I don't know. My brother had awesome chubby cheeks I loved to kiss when he was little. My sister was ALWAYS in charge. The rules were made and steered by her. That would be the job of the eldest sibling. We shared a room until maybe Mandy was in Jr. High. We kept it pretty clean and each year were told that Santa was not going to show up unless we cleaned our closet.
I remember one of my favorite toys that year was some kind of pink snail with hair. Sounds nasty, but it was all sparkly, and i loved it. It came with a little comb, and the shell had a key you would use to unlock it and open it up to keep little treasures in it. My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake were big hits during this time for me.