In the afternoon, Mr. Henderson informed us about a special trip he was interested in planning for us. It sounds really great, and we’re all excited. He said he could make plans for us all to go away to a Boy Scout camp about thirty miles away, for about three days. It won’t exactly be for camping, but it’s something like that, anyway.
There’s a bunk house for sleeping, he said, and a mess hall for eating, and people there to cook, and stuff like that. He says it’s in a really great place right on a lake, and we can go canoeing and it’s being planned for late next month, if we’re all interested, like who wouldn’t be?
We spent half the afternoon instead of doing English, talking about the trip, and he said, since we’re all so enthusiastic, he’s going to go ahead and make application or whatever, and he’s going to get a flyer out to our parents to come to a planning meeting. We’re all so excited. It sounds really great, and it’s hard to concentrate now on anything else. I guess the day wasn’t a complete write-off, like we all feel a whole lot better about that stupid damn party.
When I told Mom about the trip, after school, she said “it sounds very nice, Dear”, but she didn’t look nearly so enthusiastic as I felt. Crap! Like I’m a little kid or something, and I’m not supposed to go away from mommy and daddy even for a few days. She said we’d talk more about it when we know more about the plans, and stuff like that. I’ll be so disappointed, if Mom and Dad decide their precious little darling babykins can’t go! I bet I’m about the only kid whose parents would be afraid a skunk would carry her off or something. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be so awful if a rabid mosquito gave that Sally a good bite, or if she wandered into a giant patch of poison ivy!
At Home Ec we all finished the stuffed animals and took them home. I got pretty good marks on mine, and so did Jennifer, but we both think it’s kind of stupid to make stuffed animals - like we’re not babies really, or anything. When I brought mine home, Mom thought it would have been a good idea to have given them from the entire class to the new children’s hospital that just opened, and she said I should tell Miss Blount that, but I don’t know if I will.
Anyway, she asked us what we’d like to do next and nobody said anything, so she said, “How about some more stuffed animals?” And and would you believe it, most of the kids said sure, great! Some of us are going to get our own patterns though - she said we could, and we’re going to make clothes or something.
Jennifer and me decided we’d use the same pattern and get some nice fabric and make a long dress. Will Mom ever be surprised. She’s always after me to wear a dress or a skirt. Anyway, I remembered, Mom has a pattern I like and it’s really easy to make a Tee-shirt dress and that’s what we’ll do. I’m supposed to ask Mom if we can use the pattern.
Miss Blount keeps reminding the class that we’re supposed to bring in two dollars to pay for supplies. I hope she doesn’t mean me and Jennifer, because we won't be using any school supplies at all. If she does ask us, we’ll tell her we won’t pay.
Mom said sure, we could use her pattern, and she went shopping with me to get some material. We got enough for Jennifer too because she wanted us to, and she’s going to pay us back. My fabric is yellow knit, with a funny little pattern in it, and hers is the same but a kind of green that she likes. Mom calls it chartreuse.
I took the stuff over to Jennifer’s house after school and we cut it out on the floor in the kitchen with her little brother getting in the way and everything - what a little pest! Mom said to be sure and be very careful when we did the cutting. She said it was the most important thing in starting, and she wanted us to do it at home where she could help us, but we wanted to do it all by ourselves. Anyway, we got it all cut and then fooled around a bit with Jen’s guinea pig.
Mom told me she finally arranged for me to get flute lessons with some guy who’s in his senior year of music at the university. Dad’s supposed to take me over next Tuesday night to meet the guy at the music department. I hope everything’s okay because I really want to start taking lessons. I’m never going to get anywhere without them.
When me and Jennifer got our cut-out material to school, Miss Blount came over to have a look. I don’t know why she bothers, the other kids are the ones who need her help, not us. Anyway, she looked at our stuff and said “that’s very interesting”, or something like that. She’s not as friendly as she used to be. I think maybe she’s mad because we’re doing something on our own, and we don’t need her help. But she said we could go ahead and do our own thing, after all. Anyway, she should be glad we’re not always calling her over, there’s enough kids who do.
I was a little mad at her because I had done some of the little bits at home and started on one sleeve, and so did Jennifer, too. Both of us had decided to do all the steps together, so we could look at each other’s stuff and kind of help one another. Well, wouldn’t you know it, Miss Blount didn’t think we did such a good job of the sleeve, as far as we got, and she made us take it apart and start all over again, like she says we should. And she said we didn’t do such a hot job of cutting the material. Crap! I’d like to see what kind of a good job she’d do with Jennifer’s bratty kid brother crawling all over the stuff, eh?
I guess she found enough things wrong about what we were doing to make her happy, so then she went away and bothered some other kids. Me and Jennifer did what she said, only because we don’t feel like having a hassle or anything.
“Hey, what difference do you think it makes, the way she said we should do, or the way we’ve already done it?” I said to Jennifer.
“I don’t know, but she sure is crabby today.”
“Are you going to rip out the stuff you did?”
“I guess we’d better. She’s in a bad mood now, if we don’t, she’ll get really mean.”
“It makes me kind of mad to do it, though. I showed it to my mom yesterday, when I got done, and she thought it was really good.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not your mom who’s going to be marking your work, right?”
And sure, I knew she was right. Like always, Jennifer is the sensible one and she always does the right thing. Only I hope Miss Blount isn’t going to be like this for long, because if there’s something I hate, it’s ripping out tiny stitches and stuff. After going to all the trouble to put them in in the first place. Some stupid, eh?
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