I turned 11 in August, 1967, just before starting 6th grade. It wasn't my favorite year. My teacher, Mrs. Elkins, wasn't a grandmotherly, familiar figure like my fourth and fifth grade teachers. She was modern, all business, a good teacher but not very touchy feely. Of course, by the time you get to sixth grade that's pretty much to be expected.
Everyone was growing up during that year: girls started wearing bras, boys started noticing girls, and for those of us who were kind of shy it was a an uncomfortable experience since we weren't as cute, as exciting, or as sophisticated as our peers. We had our first school dance one spring afternoon. I remember hiding in the bathroom and classroom instead of hanging out in the cafeteria where the dance was. I did not have a good time.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed our sixth grade social studies project. We put on a Worlds
Fair with all of the sixth grade classes. We prepared for weeks for the fair. We made posters listing facts about different countries to decorate each booth. We gathered artifacts from neighbors, family members, and anyone else we could find who might have something to display. Some of us even prepared food from our country to share. All the younger students toured our fair as well as our parents, and it lasted all day. (Which was the best part of the event, since we didn't have to do any other work that day.) I was assigned to be in the group presenting Hawaii (although why we got to do a State instead of a country I'm not quite sure). I remember painting posters for our backdrop one day. I got a little blue poster paint on my orange dress and it never came out. I was pretty mad, but I learned a good lesson about cleaning up spilled paint immediately which I have never forgotten. We weren't terribly imaginative in our booth. The food we decided to share was cubed pineapple, from cans, with a toothpick stuck in each piece, displayed on a paper plate. Exciting, huh?
The other thing I enjoyed about 6th grade was chorus. Sixth graders could choose to belong to a school chorus instead of taking music if we wanted to. I chose chorus. I still remember some of those songs. "White Coral Bells", "My Grandfather's Clock", and "Loc Loman" were some of my favorites. I loved to sing those songs as we drove up to the cabin, and they were at the middle of my repertoire of lullabies which I sang when I put kids to bed as I babysat, and the nighttime songs I sang to my own babies for many years. I still love singing those songs.
My baby sister, Sharon, was born in 1967. Our family consisted of two boys and three girls when mom got pregnant for the last time. We were so sure she was going to have a boy that we only discussed boys names. Mom and dad had settled on Stephen, and we all agreed it was a good name. We were sure surprised when we ended up with a little sister instead. So surprised that when mom came home from the hospital three days later we still hadn't decided on a name. Poor Sharon's birth certificate just said "Baby Girl Russell" for many years.
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