Tag: first love

Pack… Memories of Your First Love

Second grade was the first time I fell head over heels in love. Or so I told my mother when she asked me if I had liked someone. “I don’t just like him, mom,” I’d said “I’m in love.” Mom took the situation with all the gravity it deserved (this had been my first love after all) and took me out for ice cream.

The subject of my ardent affection was Murad, a boy who sat behind me in first grade. He used to torment me mercilessly: I was a huge bow head, and he’d yank on my pigtails throughout the class, until I got fed up, turned around, smacked him over the head, and proceeded to get in trouble with our teacher. As soon as the bell rang I’d chase him down the corridors to seek revenge. Not for the pigtails: I could have lived with that, but I was an uber nerd even then, so getting me in trouble with the teacher was what I deemed revenge worthy. 

My 1st grade class photo: I’m the one with a giant bow on my head standing next to the teacher, with “can we get this over with” expression on my face (that tells you everything you need to know about 7 year old me), Murad is the boy standing to my left.

Murad wasn’t all bad though; he would bring me Mamba fruit chews, share his lunch with me, and draw me when he got bored in class (I can’t imagine his drawings were very good, but I remember being rather pleased I was his muse). At the end of second grade we were in our class play together: Alice in Wonderland. I was Alice, of course, in my favorite checkered red dress, and Murad was the Cheshire Cat, and every time we had to rehearse our scene together, we’d both blush to the tips of our ears. But I figured this was method acting at its best: Alice had got to have been flustered by a big talking cat! (Though all this blushing during the play was what had given me away to my mom – I’ve been working on my poker face ever since.)

Continue reading “Pack… Memories of Your First Love”

Pack… Winter Gloves

Not having heat or electricity was an interesting kind of challenge for schools when I was growing up. It meant that the Fall semester ended sometime in late November and Spring semester did not begin until late February or early March. The rest of the time the students were given assignments to do at home: I remember my parents would go in weekly to exchange my completed assignments for the graded ones returned by the teachers. Occasionally, during the notebook dropoff the school would give out powdered milk allocations for each student. This was always a welcome treat – I didn’t particularly like milk, but the powder was sweet, and I’d just eat it as is to satisfy my sweet tooth.

Kerosene stoves were standard-issue classroom equipment, with the pipe going through the room and right out the window. Sometimes they would burp smoke into the classroom, which wasn’t great, but still better than trying to hold a pen with half-frozen fingers (back then mild frostbite was another thing that came standard-issue – pretty much all my classmates, including myself, would get it at some point or another). Classes ran short, only 25 minutes at a time, to prevent us from having to sit in the cold for too long. Teachers would tell us to go run around during the 5 minute breaks between classes to help keep us warm. Back in the classroom, coats, gloves, and hats never came off. We would pull our long benches around the stove and huddle together, rubbing our hands and occasionally stomping our feet to ward off frostbite the best we could.

Me, my ungodly haircut (I’m still holding a grudge, mom), and Ashot – boy, did I have a crush on him then!

The teachers were not getting paid. At one point they were owed more than a year’s worth of salary. They made ends meet (or didn’t) however they could. Some were fortunate enough to have family members with gainful employment, others taught private lessons or moonlighted at other jobs. One of my teachers was letting out one of her two bedrooms while she, her husband, her mother-in-law, and her adult daughter all lived in the other bedroom. Folks were figuring out how to do without. But they still showed up, still taught, still cared about the students, still assigned and graded homeworks. This was life as we knew it.

Continue reading “Pack… Winter Gloves”