Tomorrow is the last day of April and an old verse from childhood has flashed through my mind:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and no wonder,
All the rest eat peanut butter,
Except grandmother,
and she drives a Buick.
I Googled it to see if I had it right and found about 20 other versions.
Learning the months of the year, how to tell time & fractions were the most stressful aspects of primary school. Except for the day Robert Zimmerman threw up in our classroom and the janitor came in and threw sawdust on it while the rest of us hung our heads out of the second story window. OMG, now I can't stop thinking of the trials of third grade. The days Miss Thompson wouldn't let us leave until we could tell the time on our pie-plate clocks, or see Jesus in a picture of vegetation, or standing in front of the class reciting some of the more hideous verses of Proverbs. And the terrible day they were asphalting the playground and the men with the dripping, black-smoke belching, asphalt melting barrels told us that if we inhaled it it would make us smart.That held as much appeal as the witch's oven in Hansel & Gretel, but we did it anyway and staggered back to our classes after recess.
