Growing Up As A Girl Child In America: Part 3
My career in chemistry began early and ended in high school
It turned out that my daughter would have attended the same elementary school where I started kindergarten, but I couldn’t bear to enroll her. When I visited the school as an adult mother, it was so overcrowded that half a dozen children sat outside of their classrooms weeks into the semester.
When I was seven, we moved away from the orange grove to a rural house with an acre lot next to it where I kept my pony Dapple and Bampy (my grandfather) created his vegetable garden.
I started third grade at the rural, countrified Mentone School. As the “new girl,” I had to prove myself and it turned out I made friends pretty quickly. A few weeks after school started, we all had to take standardized tests.
My principal Mr. Nease, who became a lifelong friend and counselor, called my grandparents to see him. I sat outside his office wondering why I was in so much trouble.
I knew I’d finished reading all of the colors of the reading books pretty fast, and it was boring to start with the basic colors again. It turns out that these books are still around today, published by one of my former employers.
