An old friend from grade school once sent me an unlisted Youtube video he made a year or two ago consisting of the class pictures from our current grade every year from kindergarten to fifth grade. With the names cut out from the side of the page, I like to think that I violate no sense of privacy posting this, so here is a glimpse of me at ten years old, and the people I was around for the past three or so years since moving to South Carolina in the second grade. I am lucky I got along as well as I did for a little kid being moved away from his home state and the school that he knew and all, even if just 300 miles away from Chattanooga.
Rather hating my hairstyle at the time
, but on the second row down and four pictures from the left, you can see the bratty ten year-old counterpart of Sarah's Knight.
In the far upper left corner you can see the meanest teacher I'd ever had in my entire grade-school existence, who had a weird obsession with this seeming "Big Dogs" fad that seemed to be prevalent on the East Coast in the mid-to-late 90's. She also proudly called herself the "Dragon Lady" for her reputation for going off on the kids she taught if they fell out of line. .... Not a moniker I would personally be fond of myself, especially for that reason I would possess it, but, okay.
On the far left and third row down you see the guy who became my nemesis for the rest of my elementary school years, because I had an unfortunate "never meet your heroes" encounter with him the school year before.
(And I actually remember in much detail the story behind that.)
To the far bottom right corner is the cute girl who chased me around the playground all year because I was still in a weird transition from the girls-have-cooties phase to recognizing my first crush (a crush which I am actually rather ashamed of, even - or perhaps because of - in my romantic ideals as Sarah's Knight ten plus years later to the present). I still wish I could find Mandy and speak with her again.
On the far southwest corner is a guy who was actually a worse bully to me than the above-mentioned nemesis ever was, at first, but then became my friend about halfway through the year. I don't remember us keeping in contact once we all went to the same middle school the next year, though. If the jock stereotype existed for children below high school, then he'd have been it in our class, I suppose.
To my immediate left is the girl I
should have had a crush on, Sara. ^-^ We got along well (and I unfortunately was not easy to get along with from that age forward another six years or so, so as far as I am concerned she was a saint for being willing to be friends with me; I was not Sarah's Knight then, I fear), and I also wish I could see her again, but two years later when I was moved away to southern Arkansas, where I currently live, we lost all contact, while I still wrote letters to a few other friends for another two years after moving. I imagine she is a very beautiful lady at the present, and just as nice as she was back then.
Just above Mandy in the southeast corner is the guy - who was basically a friend - who lost my favorite issue of Nintendo Power magazine when I let him borrow it during school hours, and he was caught reading it in science class, so the teacher took away forever, and I demanded reparations. But he always chickened out at the prospect of asking the science teacher for it back.
And finally, to my immediate right is a guy who was funny and wrote weird horror/serial-killer stories whose characters he asked everyone in class to sign up for acting as. I believe I was a deputy sheriff who didn't show up until the last chapter of one such story, but was partly responsible for pushing the villainous Ghost-faced Killer off the cliff and ending him once and for all. ... You heard it right; he came up with the idea of a killer in a ghost face mask by sheer coincidence a mere year-and-a-half before
Scream came out.
