Sixth Grade...

Sixth Grade...

Some might say my sense of humor never really graduated past the sixth grade...This post at It's All Relative has me thinking about it....

Things from sixth grade...

I'll start this with what I said in the comment section of Grandpoo's site...

I commented that we all wore sweat pants with the cuffs pulled up mid-shin. But you had to make sure the fabric of the sweat pants was pulled back down over the cuff just a bit, so the elastic wasn't showing. Also, your socks couldn't come much above the top of the shoe.

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I also mentioned this strange obsession we had with these squeeze-drinking bottles with Coca Cola logos on them. I remember I got mine for a dollar at Rose's, and I was among the first to have one, though among the last to actually get to carry mine to school. At many a lunchtime, there was much confusion as to which squeeze bottle was which, since nobody seemed to grasp the concept of using a permanent marker to write their name on their bottle. I was able to tell mine from the others because I lost the red cap that went on the end of the drinking straw, and used a blue one I'd found at the house.

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If it sucked, we called it "buddy." Or "butty." I never knew which spelling was correct. I asked for a new pair of shoes for Christmas, because mine were buddy.

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Here's a joke from sixth grade that I found in my journal. I'd written the word "HILARIOUS" with three exclamation marks and an arrow pointing at the joke, to catch my eye, in case I'd forgotten how funny the joke was years later (I did not):

Johnny Majors bought the Seven Eleven stores. He's going to rename them O and 11.

I had to clarify for future reference the fact that the The University of Tennessee football team began that season by losing their first six games.

I may have actually needed that note.

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My best friends names were Lindsey and Tregg, though I became quick friends with a new student named Nigel, because he and I both read Batman comic books.

That was the year DC Comics killed off Robin using 1-900 numbers for fans to vote. I voted to save Jason Todd. He died, however. I decided, not long after, that it was probably the right decision.

I still have the Knoxville News-Sentinel article about it in a scrapbook, that Ms. Buckley cut out of the paper to give to me.

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We were reading Tom Sawyer as part of reading class. We'd read a chapter a day, out loud. It was my turn to read out loud. I don't remember what the swear word was (probably damn), but Ms. Buckley said as I got to the word, that I didn't have to say it out loud, if I didn't want to. What happened next was a rash of volunteers raising their hands and announcing that they'd read the swearing passage.

I ended up reading the cuss word out loud. I mean, I've been taught cussing by some of the finest in the world (my folks) so it was just a minor, minor thing. I'm still fairly sure it was damn, or damned.

However, it had the odd effect of people actually taking the book home and reading it, trying to find cuss words so that they might volunteer to read the book when the word came around. I'd say there are kids from that class who haven't read a book since then, but they read Tom Sawyer because they were searching for cuss words, and the teacher would let them say the cuss words out loud in class.

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Mr. Purdy taught math class. Once a week, we'd have an elimination contest using math problems. Everybody in the class would do a math problem, and those who got the question right moved up in seating position, and those who got it wrong went to the back. The questions got increasingly difficult, and whoever sat in the #1 seat at the end of class got a dollar. I heard in later years that it was discontinued in my class because Mr. Purdy got tired of me or Brad Smith winning the dollar.

I have not been able to do math without financial compensation since then.