My M&M Story.

Mmmm....memories.

It was my first day of High School and with that came all the terror and joy that the first day of school brings at any age. I was awkward. I was going to continue with that last sentence but anyone who has met me understands. I got off the bus and headed into the giant halls of a gigantic school. I was stressed out and a mess (as usual) and found my way into my english class.

The class was small, maybe 15-20 chairs in the class. I sat down in the back middle of the class, which is also where I sit in a theater since you were asking. And grabbed out my notepad/sketchbook to take some notes from the class. The teacher entered the classroom and handed out a paper for all of us to read. She gave us about ten minutes to read two pages about how people with disabilities can overcome anything. I found it inspiring. We talked about it for a while and the teacher revealed to the class she had a learning disorder but was still able to become a teacher. I had to hold myself back a little from judging her and decided that was pretty cool. Also I'm pretty sure I have some mild ADD.

Don't talk to strangers. Especially smiling ones.

We then talked about the structure of the class and the books we would read. Over the course of the class we would read 1-2 books. Our choices were Harry Potter, the Hatchet, or the Hobbit. I had read the last two so decided that if I had to read Harry Potter, being required to do so would make it tolerable.  They all seemed a little bit like Jr. High School reading to me but I didn't take Honors English or AP English but this would be a little easier compared to those. As a side note, so glad I never took AP English, English at USU and UVU were the easier than this class was going to be. Seeing all those High School kids write paper after paper in that class makes me laugh now. Education! Ha!

The teacher then passed out a bag of M&M's and told us to take as many as we wanted! WHAT?!?! Free M&M's? This class is gonna be off the hook! I took 26. I remember because she pulled (what I didn't know then) a classic teacher move and made us tell one thing about ourselves for every M&M we took. I had a few minutes before it was my turn so I wrote down a list of things about myself but ran out of things at about ten. I would try know but if you look on the side of my blog that is pretty much the most interesting things about me.  Also my dad saw a UFO in our backyard once.

Kitty likes to scratch! And fill up water pitchers!

It was my turn. One girl had taken 1 M&M. Most had only taken a few so when it got to me there were a lot of pauses. I remember I told them a few things about me and then that I liked to ride motorcycles, which was partly true, and then I had nothing. Lots of "ah's" and "um's" followed until I finally had to pass at 18 or so things. I felt really stupid but realized I didn't really like or know any of the people in the class so I shrugged it off till lunch. At lunch my friend Spencer told me in his class they passed out toilet paper and he took 1/2 of one. So he just said, "My name is..." and then sat down. I wish I had heard that before my English class.

Lastly the teacher said that our first assignment would be to make a poster about ourselves. We could print out pictures, write, or draw pictures. She had me at draw. I started to think about all the cool motorcycles I could draw, as I often do. But I really thought about drawing monsters and superheroes as I oft do. I sat in class and thought about it all for a minute as the teacher wrapped up the class. This was a weird class. Just weird. As class wrapped up I looked over my class schedule and noticed a little 'R' next to English. I went to my other classes,  to lunch, to another class, and then home. I talked to my mom about that class and how unlike my other classes it was and asked her to call the school and figure out what the 'r' was. Turned out that the 'r' stood for Resource. Which is where the kids that have a hard time reading or developmental problems go. 

I got switched into a normal English class but have often thought about that experience as a major hallmark of my life. It pretty much sums up my life in an hour class. My friends always thought M&M's were so amusing after this, I just thought it was embarrassing. Boy am I glad High School is over. 

Me. In High School. Probably not on Halloween.