“I told you I was on a budget!”
3 minute read
April 10, 2005, 1:41 AM
Kids say the darndest things sometimes. This was one of those cases. On Friday at Wal-Mart, a really young girl, probably around first grade or so, said to her mother, proudly, “I told you I was on a budget!” after buying a few things on her own ticket in my line.
Of course, the thing that amused me more than that was what she said while I was ringing up her mother’s stuff. This girl, on her budget, presumably being a real cheapskate with her own money, then turned to her mother, and asked her if she could buy her something. Now we know what “I’m on a budget” really means. We’re not spending much if we’re on our own budget, but on mother’s budget, on the other hand…
I was quite amused, to say the least.
Meanwhile, today, one of my mother’s students came through the self-checkouts while I was running them. See, Mom’s students recognize me because Mom has that photo of me on Breda 2008 on her wall at school. Still, seeing Mom’s students reminds me of how long it’s been since I was in middle school. You realize it’s been nearly ten years since I was even a student at Stuarts Draft Middle School. And since I was her students’ age, it’s been twelve years. What really amazes Mom’s students is my telling them how the school used to end at Mom’s room and Roxie’s room when I went there. And both of those rooms had windows in them. These children were just being born when SDMS was enlarged in 1993. That still just amazes me. The kids are always very surprised to hear that.
Still, that 1993 addition was definitely a memorable experience for me. I was in sixth grade at the time, and most of the new rooms were constructed along the sixth grade hall. So my teachers would be trying to have class, and all of a sudden, the construction workers would start jackhammering or something, making lots of noise. Lots of banging and other distracting noises. I remember one time that they were jackhammering right next to the doors at the end of the hallway, and you couldn’t hardly hear what the teacher was saying over the noise. Then due to the construction, for fire drills we had to walk across the building to use the exits on the other side of the building, since ours were blocked by construction. Of course, the nice thing about the new evacuation plan during construction was that Mrs. Kidd would pre-announce all the fire drills that were done during construction to remind us of the new evacuation routes. Then she’d go over to the panel and set off the alarm. Interestingly enough, they started jackhammering right after one of Mrs. Kidd’s fire drill announcements, and so we had to listen for the sound of the fire alarm over that jackhammer. And you must admit, the Edwards horns at SDMS kind of sound like a jackhammer anyway. And the jackhammer was louder than the fire alarm, too.
Goodness… all I have to say is that after all the inconvenience that came with getting that addition built, it really made you appreciate having the addition in a completed state when it was finished, because that meant we could learn in peace once again. For the children nowadays, as well as a lot of the faculty, it’s always been there. But I was there when it went up.
For that matter, I can tell you about the magical properties of a triangular section of concrete on the sidewalk near the entrance to the eighth grade hall. This was better known as the “magic triangle”. For those of you who are interested, it’s a triangular section of concrete to the left of the main sidewalk as you’re facing away from the school, looking at the parking lot. That’s the “magic triangle”.
Ah, memories…
Web site: Lionberger Construction - they built the 1993 SDMS addition.
Song: Five O'Clock World
Quote: By the way, I scanned in 39 photos of the store from Today's Special tonight for the redesigned Web site. Yes, I'm serious when I say I'm revamping the site. All the scanned photos of the store were re-scanned in higher resolution and better quality. Then I'm also going to put all new video stills on the site, since the ones that are on there now have been appropriated by everyone and their mother with a little page about Today's Special. So it's time to update the material, to maintain my edge over the rest.
Categories: Fire drills, Middle school, Some people, Walmart