NO BIRTHDAY PARTY

Intro

Here are some slices of my life

There are much more to show

Yet, here’s what most influenced me

If you’d like to know

          “Mommy, I’ll be eight years old soon.  I can’t wait until my birthday party.”

          “Elly,” said Mommy. “You’re not having a birthday party.  We’ll have a cook-out in the park instead.”

          “No birthday party,” I say to myself.  “What a bummer.  I’ll be eight years old.  I want a party.”

          “I go outside to play.  I tell my little girlfriends I’m going to be eight years old soon.”

          “Can I go to your party?”  they ask.

          “I’m not having a party.”

          “I don’t believe you,” they say.  “You just don’t want us to come to your party.  I’m not playing with you anymore.”

The Cook-Out

          “Let’s get this fire going,” says Daddy. 

          He struggles and struggles and finally gets it going.

          “Now let’s make the hot dogs and hamburgers.”

          He then puts them on the grill.

          I walk away.  I’m not interested.  I want a birthday party.   A little later Daddy comes up to me eating and says, “Aren’t these hot dogs and hamburgers good?”

          “I don’t know,” I say.  “I didn’t have any.”

          “Let’s get you some,” says Daddy.  And, so he does.

School Year Ends

          Soon after my birthday the school year ends.  Next year I’ll be in third grade.  But even when school is out, the kids come to the schoolyard to play.  The boys play ball and the girls play jump rope.  But I’m not too good at jump rope. So, they make me a steady turner.  That means I stand at one end of the jump rope and constantly turn it.

          There is another game that we play, but we play it on the sidewalk.  It’s called Puss in the Corner.  My uncle used to make fun of that game.  He would say, “What do you do?  Do you stand in the corner while I hit you in the puss?”   

          Then there is another game.  I don’t know what you call it but I’ll call it, “hit the stick.”  You try and hit an ice cream stick on the ground with a ball.

          Then there is a ball game called War.  You yell, “I declare war on ___.”  That’s all I remember.

Elementary School

          Elementary School wasn’t bad, better than staying home.  It was easy.  The math was a little difficult.  Then they changed their way of teaching math and it became easy. 

 Junior High School

          Then there was Junior High.  I started out in a rough Junior High.  There was a gang of girls after me.  Why?  I have no idea.  When my parents found out, they asked,

“What did you do?”  I took that personally and thought that there must be something wrong with me.

          After that my parents enrolled me in a private school going from kindergarten through twelfth grade.  However, the school would only admit me for nineth grade and up.  I still had six more weeks of eight grade to finish and I couldn’t go to public school unless it was in my district.  But I had an aunt and uncle in another school district from mine.  My uncle, Uncle Vinny, said I could stay with him and my aunt for those six weeks and go to the Junior High near them.  And, so I did.  My father would then pick me up on Fridays and I would spend the weekend with my parents.

High School

          What I remember most about High School were the twelfth-grade high school parties.  Every few weeks one of us had a party.   One person would bring the records and we would dance.  Of course, almost everyone smoked.  And some of the guys would bring cans of beer.

After High School

          When I graduated High School, that was the end of my childhood.  My parents started to get very serious about the guys I went out with.  They looked them up and down as potential husbands.  Ugh!

          But my parents did send me to college, The University of Vermont.  There I was to look for a husband.  But I was slow when it came to that.  I just wanted to meet lots of people and have fun. 

College - My Boyfriends

          I had a boyfriend, Neil, my first year of college.  He was from Vermont farm country, the dairy farm country.  And when he was very young, he went to a one-room school-house.  I found his way of life very different from mine and very, very interesting.

          I soon had his pin. And he came home with me on school holidays.  However, the two of us had a silent agreement.  It would never go farther than that. 

          It was also the time of the Women’s Rights Movement in which I believed.  And my parents were beside themselves.  They wanted and old-fashioned daughter and son-in-law with two, possibly three, children.  As for me, they wanted me to sit quietly in a chair, with my hands folded and my mouth shut.

          However, I knew exactly where I stood when I visited Neil at the end of his college year.  He was so excited.  He was graduating and the Government had just informed him, that he was going into the army in Germany.  And Neil was so happy!

          Well, that was it.  I actually felt good because I knew the relationship was over and it was time to move on.  I didn’t give him his pin back right away because I didn’t want questioning by the girls in the dorm.  But I silently knew it was over between us.  And that was Ok,

          However, in spite of everything, my father took me out of college.  I did not do well in college but I could have gone back.  But that summer I went to Israel on vacation with my aunt and uncle.  It was wonderful.  But then it was time to go home.  Go home to what!

          I stayed in Israel for a year, most of the time on a kibbutz.  I loved it and, of course, I had a new boyfriend.

          At the end of the year, I went home to my parents without the boyfriend.  Now what?  It just so happened, a few days later, guess who showed up?  Neil with his pregnant wife.

          Well, enough about my boyfriends.  I later married someone else and had a daughter.  Life goes on.  Yes, life goes on.

My Dear

I will end

My book right here

Hope you loved it all

My Dear