Happy Memory CHALLENGE! Challenge 8: Schools
     
  Think of one Challenge Memory for each school you've attended.

  

pastels illustration of May Pole dance

 

South Mifflin Elementary School

May Day in the 1950s... The school celebrated with a festival.
The fifth-grade girls wore pastel cotton skirts that matched the streamers we wound around the May Pole as we danced. There were two classes so two dances, but they were one girl short.
I got picked to dance it twice!

The next year I was the Elf Master of Ceremonies, but the fifth grade May Pole dance was my delight.
Me, dressed as an elf, in sixth grade.
 

 
  Me in a kimono hiding behind a fan  

Mifflin Junior High School

I was one of the three little maids in a production of The Mikado. Well, in our production there were nine little maids. I can sing more or less OK when in a chorus, so I know where to put the notes. By myself, not so much.

Understandably, I never was cast in a musical again.

  



 
 

cartoon of marching band formation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe I was playing
the alto horn that year. Schneider plugged me
in wherever the band needed an instrument.
Small school.

  

Mifflin High School

An extremely odd memory is the first that came to mind. One time our marching band did a halftime show with a formation where I marched on the sideline, and everyone lined up behind me. Mr. Schneider said he put me there because I was the best marcher.

Why oh why, out of all my memories of high school with a reasonable percentage being happy, did that occur to me first? I did love marching band, but…

  
Newspaper clipping with headline "Mifflin Debate Team Wins Four Out Of Four"
It should probably have been a memory about our remarkably successful and fun debate team. Or friends. Or the satisfaction I found in Mrs. Hershler’s geometry class. Or playing a bass clarinet solo in the concert band at least. Go figure.
 
 
         
  Classic dorm with TP coming out into the wind  

Ohio Wesleyan University

My freshman year at Ohio Wesleyan I was assigned two roommates. One was an intellectually and culturally sophisticated preacher’s kid from the east who was pre-med. The other was a “Wendy Wesleyan” small town girl who was all about the sorority and her frat boyfriend and nice, conservative clothes. We were an odd combination who never hung out together, but we weren’t antagonistic either (although Marsha and I did make Kathy take down the Christmas decoration she put on our door: May all my enemies go to hell. Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel. Hilaire Belloc.) One unusual quirk we shared was that we all liked sleeping with the window open, even when it was cold out.

One night it was quite windy. Our room was on the fourth floor, above the roof of the porch. Somehow, we discovered that if you just unrolled toilet paper it would fly out across the lawn and land in the trees. The three of us sat on the windowsill and unrolled until Austin Hall was well TP-ed. It was a magic moment, although I imagine the next morning was less joyful for the powers that be.

  
         
 

 
 
My Images of the Night bookMy Images of the Night book		  


The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

It started with an exercise I did for a drawing class in graduate school, wherein I sat down at midnight with a marker and a ream (500 sheets) of paper, and made at least one mark on each sheet. After a while you sort of get in a zone and images start to come out. I then used some of these "night images" in a silk-screening class. I had studied book binding the year before, and turned my night images into a book. It was an edition of, I think, three. A professor suggested I see if the Art Institute prints department head would want to purchase this book. They didn’t, of course, but I was monumentally flattered that the prof suggested it. It was the only time while I was there that such a suggestion came up in any critique. One of life’s little victories.

  
 

 
         
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