Drug awareness

One of my sisters is now a PTA member at the elementary school all three of us attended as children.  Her sons, my nephews, go to school there.  Sometime last year, the association cleaned out a storage cache dating back to the school's days under its original name, Sunnyside.  There were photos, letters, programs, and scrapbooks from as early as the 1950's ... and nobody wanted them.  Some of the items eventually made their way to the school district's headquarters, but my sister rescued things that otherwise would have been thrown out.

The page above came from a scrapbook from the late 70's or early 80's.  Look, pictures from a drug awareness program! I remember attending those at school.  See, there are some teachers speaking, probably about the evils of drug abuse.  There's a police officer, perhaps explaining the legal ramifications, or what to do if a bad man should ever offer you drugs.  And ...

Wait wait wait wait wait.

There's an interactive table of pipes and bongs?  And Mrs. Zieth is explaining their uses? I so don't remember this from the drug awareness programs when I was in elementary school.  Look at the little kids, eyes alight with interest, exploring the fascinating items on the table.  How come we never got a pipe and bong demonstration?

I think my favorite part is that this photo was actually taken, selected for the scrapbook, pasted down, and carefully captioned.

Penpals: The T-shirts, Book 1

In December, I introduced The Penpals: the series of books Allison and I wrote in elementary school.  Now, as promised, I present a list of every saying I put on a t-shirt or sweatshirt in my illustrations.  Like I said, I was waaay into that as a fashion statement.  After words, I list who wore the shirt.  Because the names are half the fun.

In order of appearance in Book 1 (4th grade):

The Penpals

Have I blogged about the series of books Allison and I wrote in elementary school?  I just found my copies upstairs.  Yes, Allison and I were authors at a young age.  Each of us wrote our own book to start, structured as a series of letters between a pair of penpals.  Subsequent tomes united our penpal characters and their adventures.  In fact, volume two was cleverly entitled Penpals II: United.  (Volume three, Penpals III: United Again.  Volume four, Penpals #4: One Last Time.)

I know we were children when we wrote these - volume two would have been written around fourth grade - but reading parts of them now is nonetheless horribly embarrassing.  I'm mostly embarrassed for my ten-year-old self, who thought the stories were hip and clever.  (Our friends seemed to think so, but what did they know?  They were in elementary school.)  We illustrated the books with colored-pencil depictions of photographs, both entertaining and cringeworthy today.      

By Penpals II: United, my characters - Anni and Courtney - were fifteen.  They'd spent some time out of contact, while Courtney's family was in witness protection because her dad secretly worked with the FBI to bring down a big drug dealer.  But, luckily, two years later the police "caught the gang."  Whew!  So long, witness protection!

Meanwhile, Anni was still living in San Francisco, and had acquired a 17-year-old superstar actor boyfriend named Brent Rockne.  Soon Courtney flew out to visit Anni's family for Christmas.  They went to Aspen, where they met up with Allison's penpal characters Jenni and Sabrina.  Then everyone went back to California.  And somewhere in there, Brent Rockne took the girls on a little ski adventure.  Which was written up in a teen magazine!  Check out the article below.  The sentences span across the photo, rather than being separated into columns.  That's how all the best magazines do it.

Where do I begin?  How about with the fact that Brent Rockne looks like a sketchy thirty-something dude?  Or the fact that he's groping Anni's chest?  And the restaurant.  F'Reau D'Plaur?  I clearly had some vague notions about the French language, but none of the details.  Then there's the article itself.  Ski vail?  You may be aware of the great skiing available at Vail in Colorado, but this is the more exclusive "Ski vail" in California.  Where seventeen-year-old actors can be alone with a foursome of fifteen-year-old and thirteen-year-old girls: no problem!  At least I didn't make him eighteen.  Not then, anyway.  

The rest is just like this.  Even better, in many cases!  Sometime I'm going to go through the pictures and write down every saying I drew on t-shirts and sweatshirts.  I was really into that as a fashion statement in 1991.

Oh, and rent SURF NITES.  I hear it was radical.

Things that scared me as a child

1. That Cookie Monster would chase me around the basement, riding a bed (based on a bad dream)

2. The Big Bad Wolf

3. That our living room clock would chime twelve times for midnight and then keep on chiming, and a door on the front of the clock would open and a skeleton would come out

4. Animal from the Muppets

5. The Pistol Packin' Papa shoe holder draped over the inside of my closet door

6. The full-length mirror on the door to the den at Nana's house, when the door was in motion

7. The Punky Brewster episode where all they go into a cave

8. My mom's cousin Edgar

Milk, juice, or pop

Recently, I was struck by the powerful urge to take some pictures at my old elementary school. It was kind of odd and out of the blue, but there was no denying it once the idea took root. I even knew exactly the shots I wanted to get. So the next time I was in town, early one sunny Sunday morning, my camera and I took a walk.

Maybe it's because I could count the number of times on one hand that I've returned since sixth grade graduation, but walking around the school playground took me back in time. I was the only person there - not surprising for 6:45 a.m. - but I heard echoes. I remembered walking up the path with my neighborhood gang, bursting with pride when I started first grade and no longer had to veer to the right toward the kindergarten playground. Big kid land: I had arrived. How impossibly tall the tires seemed. Playing four square and locked games of double dutch. A music class in kindergarten when we all went outside and banged wooden sticks together on the blacktop. Lining up after recess on our room numbers. Perching on the monkey bars with a group of "cool" girls in fourth grade, gossiping about boys and singing songs. Pushing friends into the Love Box and proclaiming they loved the ickiest boy in our grade, then blocking the Hate Box so they couldn't reverse the spell. Standing in the Love Box myself to declare my adoration of Jordan Knight, infinity plus one, and then upping it to infinity plus infinity after Jodie tried to claim him for herself. Tossing a rock into the funnel ball chute in lieu of a ball, until Heidi got beaned on the head. Climbing the mountains of snow created by plows on the blacktop's perimeter in winter. The feeling of being a kid, which you sometimes forget was a very distinct feeling, until a certain expanse of pavement and some familiar brick walls erase twenty years, and there you are again.

The photos turned out well, I think. Below are a few; the rest are here.