Day two: youth. The early years.

I didn't exactly have the easiest childhood.  There were a lot of things that happened to me that children shouldn't have to experience - but that's not the point of this blog. The point of it is that I was a pretty creative kid; you have to be when you don't have money or the latest POGs or whatever was en vogue at the moment.

So this is me in fifth grade before a music recital.  I'm wearing pantyhose that are too big and a homemade shirt.  I made that choker, too.  That thing was bad ass.

Moving on.  Let's go to the past, shall we?

I don't have a lot of my writings and drawings from childhood at my current house.  I think it's all at my mom's house, hidden away.  I know that I have some copies of a "magazine" that we wrote and distribute on our bus (4th grade) and some songs that I wrote for my dog that would constantly run away (3rd grade) amongst some other stuff that may be too sad for me to share with anyone except a therapist.

So here are some things that I found this morning, tucked into a folder that I had saved from the early church days.  On Wednesday nights I went to a program called G.A.s....I don't really know what that means anymore but I'm guessing Girls in Action because we learned a lot about missionaries and the world.  This was my first exposure to other cultures except for what I read in Kid's Discovery magazine, and I became impassioned with the planet even then.  Note: this was in the early 90s and there was a lot of talk everywhere about pollution, green house gases, oil, etc, so it's not that unusual that I wanted to save the world.

I chose a panda because my mom really liked pandas, and I thought this would inspire her.

Now, GAs weren't all sugar and spice.  There were several little girls in the class and a hierarchy was quickly established.  I was at the bottom of the social totem pole (surprise!) probably because I was poor, etc.  But I had a friend named Sandra, whom I cannot remember at all.  We were a team.  Us against the mean girls.  And this is a remberance of times gone by.

Right back,

A