east west

All in a day's work

I was somewhat entrepreneurial in elementary school. Almost embarrassingly so - sort of like those small children you periodically see around who somehow look like adults - and you look away from them, whispering to the nearest bystander, "Doesn't that baby have an old face?"

In third grade, I started The Fun Club with my best friend Joe, his sister Mary, and our friend Joshua. The purpose of The Fun Club was to have fun on the thirty minute bus ride home from school, and to collect dues because that's what clubs do. We even had business cards: Jessica Baratta - Fun Club President. To us, "fun" seemed to mean counting the number of people that would wave to us on the school bus. We would indicate every wave on a notebook organized by day, week, and month. This also entailed us waving consistently for thirty minutes, and after a point we decided that we simply could not physically do this anymore. I borrowed my mom's metronome, and Mary came up with a plastic hand on a keychain. We bored a whole in the base of the hand, and set it on the metronome - highly intending it to then be a mechanical waving hand, thus saving us the bother of waving ourselves. It didn't work - the weight distribution was uneven. As the president, I was also in charge of keeping the dues. At last count in 1989, we had $14.10. But I somehow lost it, and feel very guilty about that to this day.

In fourth grade, I went to the Red Cross Summer Babysitting program, and earned my official certificate that read: "Jessica Baratta Has Been Officially Trained as a Red Cross Certified Babysitter". I kept this in my desk drawer, so proud of it. I made up business cards (again) on stock paper, and slipped them in my rural neighbors' mailboxes with high hopes of starting my own version of The Babysitter's Club. A few weeks later, I had a friend named Jennifer over for the afternoon. We got into an argument of some sort, and she locked herself in my bedroom for two hours. I was running around the house, trying to figure out if I could somehow break into my own room from the outside, and through the window - I saw her scavenging around my desk drawer. When her mother finally came to pick her up (and thus end our friendship), I found that she had taken my Official Babysitter certificate, scratched out "Red Cross Certified Babysitter", and instead had written "Big Nerd". I hated her for this. In fact, I still do - except I hear that she's now a missionary in Guam. And you're not really allowed to hate a missionary.

In fifth grade, I started a newspaper for our class: "Sportz 'n Stuff". I hate the title so much, even now. The cutesy 'z' in place of an 's'. The casually abbreviated 'n'. The subtle hint of alliteration. "Sportz 'n Stuff" covered the 1992 Olympics, the Mazda Miata, and Michael Jordan. Because we went to a Christian school, I also had something called a "Crypto-verse" in along with the crossword puzzle and word scramble. This "Crypto-verse" was based on something I used to do with dad: the letters are scrambled up, and each letter is "assigned" a different letter. However, there is no pattern to this. Just because "A" relates to the letter "S", that does not mean that "B" will be "T". No. You have to figure it out by using the most common letters used in the English Language (A,S,I,N,T,O,E,R), and then utilize context clues. This was way too much for 11 year olds to tackle. But what's odd to me now, is the verses that I would select to use. There was nothing in there about the Lilies of the Field, or the Sparrows being fed. None of this lambs will sleep with lions, Noah built an ark stuff. Heck no. The first verse I used was "Weeping may last for the evening, but joy comes in the morning". The second verse I used was "The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves those who have a crushed spirit." These aren't as terrible as others that I could have chosen - but geez. I want to tell that little girl to lighten up.

posted by jessica @ 4:17 PM