Shivering from excitement and the unusually cold spring weather, I stood with my classmates waiting to enter the striped red and white tent that had appeared overnight on our school’s large playing field. It was carnival day at Mary Pickles Goff Elementary School and we were wiggling anxiously to give our tickets to the attendant. For weeks, flyers had been posted around school describing all the different games we would be able to play and the amazing prizes we would have a chance to win. Our little heads were full of visions of ring tosses, birthday guesses, basketball throws, and huge stuffed teddy bears.
During morning assembly, Mrs. Rabalais had announced that the 6th grade classes would get to line up first, ahead of all the younger children, because we had brought in the most food for the Drive Against Hunger. I was sure that my contributions of a can of sliced olives, a jar of peanut butter, and two bags of elbow noodles had tipped the scale in our favor. Plus, unbeknownst to my mother, I had also snuck her large tin of ginger from the spice cabinet. I despised the taste of ginger because my mother believed a teaspoon dissolved in a glass of warm water cured everything from upset stomachs to colds. She looked for any opportunity to pour this concoction down mine and my sister’s throats.
My bare legs were freezing as the wind blew in from the north side of the courtyard and buffeted against the main campus building. Like the brackets of a parenthesis, my brown pig-tails hung from either side of my head, framing a freckled face with wide set brown eyes. With one hand I nervously opened and closed the Velcro tab on my skirt pocket, while chewing the cuticle on my other hand’s thumb. In so many more ways than my young mind could comprehend at the time, this day was going to be one I would remember for the rest of my life.
~Belinda writes, ponders, considers, questions, and muses on her blog, Upside Down Bee
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