Elementary School

I spent the better part of last night and a few hours this morning looking through the big box my mom kept of all my early elementary school response journals and artwork. It is so fun reading all that stuff. Kids think about the strangest things! But I have not come across anything stranger than Jen’s letter about the queen of the Badlands. Still, it’s pretty amusing.

Kids must perceive things so much differently than adults. That’s why looking back at this stuff is so interesting! Like, ok, my first grade response journal entries consist of stuff like, “I love my mommy, and my daddy, and Mandeep and I like playing at Mandeep’s house and I love Mrs. Nelson and I like school and I like playing and I like mommy.” To which my teacher replies in her perfect printing, “I like you too, Colette.” Cold! Cold!!! Ahhh!! And the next day was, “I like playing with Raissa and with my brother and I like walking to school and do you like walking to school Mrs. Nelson? Remember I love you,” and her response was, “I drive my car to school, Colette.” A period! It would have totally changed the air of the reply to put an exclamation mark or even a happy face. Even if it was not meant that way, the way I perceive that is something like, “I drive to school, you ignorant child.”

And then there are the fourth grade journal entries. Oh. My. Gosh.

I loved my teacher so much and made absolutely no effort to curb my enthusiasm in that regard. Seriously, every entry is like, “You are my favourite teacher ever, Ms. Lyle-Hartness!!” But I vividly remember thinking she was so cool. There was this one day when Dieter fell down on the pavement or something, but he scraped his knee. Ms. Lyle-Hartness was on supervision and so she just picked him up and flung him over her shoulder and marched him to the nurse’s office. And, if memory serves, she was wearing three-inch heels at the time. Good gravy. She was the coolest ever.

Of all the adults I knew as a child, she would probably be the one I’d most like to re-connect with over coffee or something. I have no idea how I’d find her though. I think I’d recognize her in a crowd but the chances of just running into her are pretty slim. Whether or not she even lives in Calgary still… I really can’t be sure. Dianne Lyle-Hartness… I remember that she was married to an arty guy and lived kind of far from the school. She taught piano lessons and had a cat but I don’t remember its name. I think it was a verb, though, like Prickle or something? It was a “P” name, I’m rather sure.

The funny thing is, though, that if I ever were to have the opportunity to contact her, I’d have to introduce myself as the girl who used to think she was Sailor Moon. It’s pretty much the only discernable trait I can think of to identify myself. (I mean, how many other girls had long, brown hair and glasses in fourth grade?)