Pigtails, Lunchboxes, and Cooties--Megan

I think most people would agree that elementary school was one of the simplest times of our lives. Well, at least I hope it was. For me, kindergarten through fifth grade was the most fun and stress free at West Heritage Elementary school. The worst thing I had to worry about was getting yelled at by Carla (the proctor) for talking too loud with my friends in the cafeteria, pulling a ticket in class from the behavior chart from green to yellow to red, or a stupid rumor that went around for about a day that I don’t wash my hands. Well, technically, the worst thing that happened to me from the eyes of others was my parents getting divorced when I was 5 years old; but come on, I was five years old, my parents loved me so much and took care of everything for me so it really didn’t affect me. I was too innocent to understand what it really meant, and it wasn’t until long after elementary school that it started to affect me, but that’s a whole different story. My memories of elementary school are all wonderful, and I would never change a thing. Although popularity didn’t matter to anybody back then, if it did, I bet you I would have been the most popular. I don’t mean that to sound conceited or stuck up, but I was friends with so many people. The main reason this happened for me is, ironically, because of my mom. My mom was a kindergarten teacher at that school, and people either had her as their teacher or knew who she was. Therefore people saw the connection because our last name, let’s just say, isn’t very common in this area. Lots of my friends were made by them simply asking me “Are you Mrs. Trevarthen’s daughter?!”, and boom next thing you know we are sitting together playing hand games at the lunch table. It was so easy to make friends, that's one of the things I miss the most. Another thing I would like to point out that stress, wasn’t in my vocabulary until middle school. I had one teacher each year, which meant that she knew the amount of homework each one of her students would have. Also, we were young, they weren’t going to pile on bunches of homework to 511 year olds. The first B I ever had was in fifth grade, so maintaining straight A’s was never an issue. I never stressed about boys or relationships either because I didn’t start having crushes on boys until the fourth grade, and that was only because my other friends started to like certain boys too. I never cared, boys had cooties so I didn’t want to mess with them anyway. The only things I focused on was tetherball, handball, digging up the most worms, or kicking the ball the furthest in kickball. Fast forward time to today, as a senior in high school getting ready to be in college, I ask myself, has much really changed since then? Yes, I agree the amount of work and it’s difficulty has gotten more extreme, but that’s how it is supposed to be. As we grow older we need the work to be challenging to see what we are good at and what we are bad at; to define ourselves as people because if it were still easy, we would all be the same. In addition, making friends could be just as easy, but it is our own decisions to have prejudice or to be kind. All in all, I dedicate a lot of who I am today to being “Mrs. Trevarthen’s daughter”. My mom has given up so much for me and I could not be the person I am today or who I will be in the future without her. I do, aspire to be like her one day. Anyhow, elementary school was more than just an introduction to me, but a metaphor of how easy and enjoyable life can be if we make it that way.