As a child I went to a lot of schools my parents moved a lot. I started 1st grade in Monroe, Oregon and was there for the fall of the year. I remember waiting with some other kids that were neighbors for the school bus. I remember two big slides on the school play ground and singing " Do you know the Muffin Man and playing in the gym and walking to lunch with other kids. I also got my first kiss from a boy on the play ground LOL I was age 6. My mom said my first day home from first grade my sex education began. I no longer thought the rooster was beating up on the hen. I told her what he was doing instead much to her embarassment right in front of the neighbor lady. Poor mom. LOL.

I don't remember the first teacher I had. I do remember feeling very hot and achy and the next thing I remember we had moved and I was going to school in Belle Fountain, Oregon. I later learned from my mom that the teacher called her because I had a temperature of 103. Was very hot and listless.

I was taken to the doctor and put in the hospital and do not remember that time. My mom said I had rhemuatic fever and almost died. I was very sick for 6 weeks. While in the hospital my dad got a new job and they moved. So I started a new school right after Chrismas. We were in Bell Fountain for about 3 months and I could walk to school from our house and always stopped at the little store on the way home and the store keeper gave me strawberry or cream soda for free. Or an ice cream cone.

My little brother was 2 and half then and he decided he could fly and jumped off a tall pile of bricks and broke his collar bone. I remember playing on the giant strikes there and learning the song Playmates and Little White Duck. My dad and mom then moved to Alpine, Oregon and we were there all summer and I started 2nd grade there. The desks had funny holes in them and were wood and wrought iron.

The school was just across the street from my house so I went home for lunch. We lived there all fall and then in then my folks moved to Brownsville, Oregon. I distinctly remember not liking my second grade teacher in Brownsville, Oregon. We lived in two different houses in Brownsville.

We spent Christmas in the first house and I got my first bicycle. Then one day I got home from school and found the house we lived in had burned. I was scared because no one was home. The neighbor lady was supposed to be watching for my bus but got a phone call so missed my getting off. I was terrified my parent and siblings had all burned up in the fire. Then the neighbors teenage girl came and got me. I was standing in what was left of the kitchen door crying.

She told me my sister and brothers were okay and so was my mom and dad. Most of the stuff they got out of the house. I went to the neighbors house and in a few hours my parents came and got us and they had moved all our stuff they had saved into a house two blocks from the one that burned. We could still see the burned house from there. Then I got sick again and had a kidney infection and do not remember when we moved but we moved to my dad's home town of Trout Lake, Washington.

My dad had a job on a dairy. His boss had a little girl one year younger than me and we played together all summer. When school started in the fall the teachers decided I should be put back in 1st grade. Because I had missed so much school due to being sick. From Mrs. Madison I learned how to read and did much better. She was a fun teacher. We lived in Trout Lake until the summer I turned 11.

In third grade I got Mrs. Patrick. I did not like her and she was a mean teacher to a lot of the kids. I was not very good with arithmetic and so didn't do well or learn my multipication tables very well until many years later. My best friend from first to fourth grade was Jolie Siefert. Then she moved to Juneau Alaska. I have not been able to find her since.

At age 12 My dad got hurt on the job and we moved to Hazel Dell, Washington where Dad was in the hospital for about 2 months. While going to school there the teacher found out I could not see well and I got my first pair of glasses. We stayed in Hazel Dell until school was out then moved to Claskinine, Oregon where my dad and two uncles had a logging job for a few months. Again we lived close enough to the school for me to walk home. I remember being in 5th grade there and my best friend was Valerie Godsey. I also got to work in the lunch room and got free hot lunch. We stayed there for about a year and lived in a huge house I had a bedroom all to myself. From there we moved to Husum, Washington into a house my dad and mom were buying from my grandma and next door to my dad's cousin Clem who was a bachelor and a big man of 400 lbs. He was a gentle giant. He loved us kids and took us fishing and out to dinner often.

I was in 6th grade age 13. Then I went to middle school the next fall and 7th grade. There we had to change classes. It was so different than grade school. I had not had many friends after Jolie Siefert moved. Partly from moving so much and partly kids just picked on me and I was the pariah. We had sock hops every Friday and no one wanted to Dance with me. We also had to do square and round dances for P.E.

One day a week and the boys did not want to touch me. They only did if the teacher was not looking. The kids would tease me and call me names. I loved English though and Mrs. Zimmerman and Mrs. Watson and Geography. Mr. Camp was fun for Science but Mrs. Lane we had for Math and P.E and she was a mean teacher.

She loved to humilitate kids in front of the class by having us go to the black board and when we did not understand the problem would ridicule and deride and the other kids would laugh at us. Math was my weak area. Some of the girls once decided to gang up on me. I knew they were going to do something so I filled my purse a shoulder strap up with rocks. Then I got into the V of where the school formed an L shape and my back to the wall. There were 5 girls who said they were going to beat me up.

I knew they could not get behind me and when they tried to come at me I wacked them with my rock filled purse. After that they left me alone. I turned 15 that summer and did NOT pass to 8th grade. I had to repeat the 7th grade. I did not do much better the next year in 8th grade either and puberty had begun. Ugh suddenly NONE of my favorite clothes fit. I was so embarassed developing and afraid everyone was noticing. I had turned 16 in August

They had school dances in the fall and spring. I wanted to go and my parents let me but my dad took me and that was embarassing as well. No teenage girl wants her dad to tag along. But at least I got to dance with my dad and a couple of the men teachers were nice enough to dance with those of us who were wall flowers. In mid October the mumps started going around and though I had gotten my MMR shots. I always got stuff and just before Halloween I got the mumps.

My mom had gone to the school to get my homework and helped me do it. I got up too soon and had a relapse so was home not two weeks but a month as a result and was home with the mumps when JFK was shot. When I got back to school my teacher Mrs. Zola Lane had given my mom fractions for me to do at home and I had them all done. However what she did not tell my mom was the class had moved on to percent. My first day back was my last day. She got me up to the board knowing I had no clue what she was talking about and wanted me to do percent figures.

The class started snickering and she started calling me stupid. I erased the board told her I was NOT going to do it and was leaving. I stomped down the hallway, got my jacket and other things out of my locker when she caught up to me. Mrs. Lane had long painted finger nails and she dug them deep into my arm and told me to march back to class. I bit her arm, kicked her in the leg. Ran to the office and told them I was quitting school and going home.

It was a 7 mile walk home but the day for November was warm. I had walked about two miles when a car started driving real slow next to me. A man rolled down the window and said he wanted to talk to me. I told him I didn't want to talk to him because he was a stranger. I kept walking. He said the school called and wanted me to go back. I told him no. He asked how far my home was from school and I told him 7 miles. He said well you have about 5 to go. why don't you get in and I'll drive you. Nope I told him I am not going anywhere with you.

He drove off and I had gone another 2 miles when he came back and had my dad with him. My dad asked what was up and I told him. That was my last day of school for two years. My dad told the social worker who became good friends with our family and still is that I was 16 and if I didn't want to go to school I didn't have to. Dick Moore said well if she is 16 the state law says she can quit school. That is what I did for two year. Then when my dad and mom moved to Trout Lake I went back to school as a Freshman at age 18 and 19 as a Sophmore and got straight A's except in Math.

I got kicked out of class the first week in Freshman year because the teacher didn't like my persisitant questions as to why I had to learn Algebra and did not seem to have an adequate answer that made any sense to my how you mixed letters and numbers to get some stupid answer that still to this day makes no sense at all. To me letters are for writing and numbers for math which I loathed. I could not ever make sense how you mixed the two still don't.

My favorite teachers were Miss. Williams and Mr. Schear. My favorite subjects were English, Journalism and History But I had worked those two years for my uncle packing cedar shakes. I quit school again and got married and got my GED. I refused to take P.E in my Sophmore year due to exercises I felt were harmful to girls. I didn't need the class anyway because I hiked everywhere and lived on a farm and was the fastest runner in the high school. I could out run all the boys and the girls. But my dad wouldn't let me take track much to the coaches disappointment and mine. I also rode my horse about 4 days a week as well.

I then took some college classes in Journalism and Creative Writing at age 44 and 45 at Spokane Community College and got 4.0 in all my classes but with a family and other things including finding out I had Fibromyalgia I did not get my AA. That was in 1994. I then took a year correspondance course from the Institute of children's Literature and finished and got my diploma from them hanging on my wall. I completed that course April 2nd, 2001. So that is the sum of my formal education.