I had a weird "remembery" today....
The year was 1978 and I was in kindergarten. For those of you that are younger than me, this was before they'd invented such things as washable crayons and markers that only write on certain surfaces. We used pipe cleaners and tissue paper as art supplies and we liked it that way. (anyone else remember making "hyacinths" for Mother's Day by twisting little squares of tissue paper around the end of your pencil and then gluing the little twists onto the page?)
My teacher was Mrs. Haskell. I remember her not being much taller than me - it's possible I was freakishly tall even then. I was always on the back row towards the center in the class pictures... but I digress.
At some point, sweet Mrs. Haskell (who seemed to be "grandma age" to me) decided to get "creative" with our art projects. She wanted us to branch out and explore our creativity, I suppose. It's also quite possible she was drunk.
That's the only logic explanation I have for why it suddenly seemed like a wonderful idea to her to give the class a very large container of bubble gum, and tell us to chew it up and then make "pictures" by stringing the chewed bubble gum into shapes across our papers.
You heard me right - she intentionally told a room full of five year olds to not only play with their food, but gave them permission to string slobbery, sticky, sugary, chewed bubble gum out into deliciously long strands while sitting in close proximity to the other children. And of course, we all complied. What 5 year old is going to say "no" to permission like that??
I'm not sure how many other girls ended up with so much gum in their hair that it had to be cut out, but I know I was one of the proud members of that list. It seems like it was Jennifer Talley's fault. She was stretching her pre-chewed gum with reckless abandon and a rather large wad of it ended up in my hair. I remember walking home from school that day with a lump o' chewed gum in my hair. It kinda grosses me out now just thinking about it. And yes, Mom tried all sorts of stuff to get it out and nothing worked. we ended up with a good trim to de-gum my hair.
I mean, seriously, what was Mrs. Haskell thinking?
4 comments:
oh man, I am laughing so hard!!! That is hilarious! Seriously.??? What kind of craziness? She must not have had kids of her own and must have just been trying to be extra free-spirited. It was the 70s, afterall. Was she a hippy grandma? Did she like LSD? Thanks for sharing such a good remembery (and such a great word!)
You are such a funny story teller, thanks for the laugh!
It seems I read the other day that peanut butter will help take gum out of hair.
But then, what would you use to get the peanut butter out?
I'm betting Jennifer, too!
I'm not meaning to advertise, but Amway's LOC does a beautiful job in disolving gum that's stuck in hair and it doesn't hurt your hair. My sister had to have some gum removed from her hair and my brother was able to help her out. I think LOC also does a pretty good job in removing crayon off of walls. -Luana
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