Third Grade Musings

I had a blast the other day going through a box of childhood things (read: crap) my mom gave me. The box has been sitting on the floor of my living room for the last three months and I finally took a few minutes to rummage through it.

The first thing I found was hard to miss: my original Nintendo Gameboy. It was practically staring straight at me when I opened the box and looked untouched, even after 21 years of silence. All it took were four new AA batteries to make that thing light back up and have me playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all over again. I still can’t pass level two.

The rest of my box was surprisingly sparse, which made me wonder whether my mom is a sentimental person or if my anti-hording personality began much earlier than I remember. I’m sure it’s the latter, although the habit of throwing things away was something I picked up from my mom, so maybe it is all her fault. I guess it will go down as one of those Chicken vs. The Egg controversies.  :)

However, I struck gold when I uncovered a third grade writing project. It was obviously a year-long assignment, containing written stories and recollections accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations. Some of the entries were about experiences on class field trips, such as going to a farm and what we thought about seeing pigs rolling around in their own filth. Others asked us to describe personal experiences, such as a time we broke something and how it made us feel. And others even asked us about real-world issues, such as world peace and violence. One particular piece stood out to me and made me smile as I tried to imagine my nine-year old self putting pencil to paper. I thought I’d share my third grade advice to achieving peace in the world.

We should have no fighting. All orphans should have a home. The world needs more caring for each other. If you give an orphan a home, you could be doing a lot for the orphans. We should stop the wars. If we have peace in the world, we will all be happy. We should stop using words that hurt and start using words that help. Everybody should stop being mean. We should all be together. There should be no gangsters in the world.

I should point out that gangsters were a real problem in the Central Valley at that time. Very scary stuff.