For some strange reason, recently I decided I’d like to have one of those god-awful t-shirts we were forced to wear in Phys Ed in high school with my old high school’s initials on it.  So, I set about searching the ‘net and found the school’s official web site: http://denhamhs.lpsb.org/

First off, the site sucks (duh) and there’s little usable information there – a few photos and a list of faculty, staff and admin folks.  My brain is teeming with ideas on stuff they could incorporate to actually generate some money for the school, such as apparel with the school name and various athletics imagery, etc.  If they had them, I’d order one myself.  But, they don’t, so perhaps that’s a business opportunity waiting?

Funny enough, the Assistant Principal is a guy I went to school with all the way from 1st grade til graduation 12 years later – Kelly Jones.  I think he was one of the five valedictorians of the Class of 1992 and, as I recall, a charter member of the FFA and also had a really strong accent or a speech impediment or something of that nature.  He was a smart kid and nice.  Now he’s Assistant Principal.   There’s also another girl from my high school class, Kristen Lieux (which, for some reason, everyone pronounces “Leer” instead of the proper French prounciation of “Lyew”), who is a teacher there.  Several of the teachers that were there in my day are still there as well – Mrs. Ann Kemp and Mrs. Katherine Degeneres who were two of my English teachers (and the ones who decided to give me the English award at graduation) and Mrs. Laure Vankerkhove who was my French II teacher and a few others towards whom I had less warm and fuzzy feelings.

I then went to the web site for one of the Elementary schools I went to – Denham Springs Elementary – and was stunned to find the “Gifted/Talented” teacher – Elizabeth “Liba” Wray – who had, in fact, taught me in that program when I was in the sixth grade (I was also in it in the 2nd and 3rd grades, I think, but I can’t remember whether she was the teacher there or not).  I am so going to email her and see if she remotely remembers me! lol  It’s so weird to look back on things that happened when you were a kid which seem insignificant and unrelated until you pull a few other pieces out of the attic and notice that they fit into the larger scheme of things.

I never really thought of myself as particularly artistic – which may seem odd, considering that I’m a graphic designer- but, when I look back on it, I guess I was frequently doing something creative.

When I was a little kid, probably between 6 and 8 years old, I drew a bunch of these creepy devil looking creatures with horns and bloody fangs and a star on their cheek.  Don’t ask me where that came from – I have no idea.  It creeps me out even now to think about it!  I think my mom still has them somewhere. Would be interesting to show them to someone and see what they think they mean.  I don’t even know where I’d dream up such a crazy thing at such a young age! That was during the time I went to that psycho daycare place called Happy Hour Daycare Center.  The place was owned by this lady (I think her name was Doris??) and she had a couple of daughters that worked there – Shelly and Sherry.  My most vivid memories of that place were that each room was painted a different color – one was dark blue, one pink, one a dark orange-red and I remember the orange-red one was creepy and dark for some reason – maybe because the light was never on?  And, I also remember Shelly walking around with a high-heeled boot that she wore whose heel had broken off, exposing the nails that had attached the heel to the bottom of the boot, telling us she would hit us with it if we didn’t take a nap.  Nice child-minding, eh?  And, I remember they fed us those French-style string green beans, cold out of a metal can. I still can’t eat those things because it grossed me out so much.

Then, I started in the Gifted/Talented program when I was at Denham Springs Elementary school.  I remember they took me into a room across from the office at one point and had me do all these tests, but they seemed like games to me, so I was fine doing them.  I remember the guy who administered the tests was named Pete and I seem to recall he was a handsome guy and he let me wear his class ring when I was in there.  I must have been flirting with him or something.  Does this mean I’m bisexual at heart? lol  I guess that’s how they determined to put me into that program to begin with.  It seems like my mom said they were IQ tests and I scored really high.  I’m going to ask my mom more about it, because it’s interesting looking back on all this stuff now and wondering how it happened.  I just have flashes of certain events or teachers or classes or whatever from that whole period of my life. It’s weird how you just hold onto certain things and everything else gets filed away somewhere from which it may never return.

In the G/T classes, I just remembered they’d have me do art projects a lot of the time.  I remember sculpting a Brontosaurus out of clay and making a replica of R2D2 from one of those big ice cream buckets they serve from at Baskin-Robbins and using a balloon to do a paper-mache dome for the head and aluminum foil around the bucket to make it silver.  Then, I remember in the 6th grade at Lewis Vincent Elementary, they had us using computers (may have done that at Denham Elementary, too)…I remember the machine was a Radio Shack TRS80 – a hardshell computer with monitor and keyboard all connected together.  They had us type in programs to make the same line of text fill the screen and other useless things like that, but when you’re 12 years old, it’s cool!

I also remember the teacher in 3rd Grade (Mrs. Harris???) wanting us to draw a picture related to a flood that had just happened in Denham Springs and I ended up doing some sort of a 3-D thing with mine where I constructed a paper replica of the Amite River Bridge using broken pieces of pencils wrapped in paper that I had colored brown (because the bridge’s metal structure was rusted – gotta make sure it’s authentic in representation! lol) and then used strips of cardboard for the “supports” and then somehow had them standing up via use of straight pins.  I recall getting out of the car and dropping it on the ground and I don’t think I could ever get the thing back together the way it was supposed to be.  I was so upset!  It was supposed to be a project we finished in class, but I asked to bring it home to finish it, so she gave us all til the next day and then I dropped it on the friggin’ ground!!!

My mom bought me a bunch of art supplies at one point, too, so I was drawing stuff and I once drew and then woodburned this photo I saw in a magazine of a rose with a ribbon through it that said “Tattoo – It Hurts”.  I wonder what ever became of that.  I think maybe I had it at Bonnie’s dad’s house.  Who knows.

I guess I’m wondering if Mrs. Wray (she goes by Liba  and she used to say her mom always said it would have been funny if her last name was Ration…as in Liberation. lol) will a) even remember me and b) if she will be surprised to find that I have ended up in a creative career if she does remember me.  I’m thinking maybe she will since my name is somewhat unique.

I never really put the pieces together until now – how I did art-related stuff in school – and then mom had me playing around with all those art supplies, then I was playing guitar and writing poetry in high school and then sorta on-again, off-again in photography (usually disposible or really cheap point and shoot cameras) and then into framing for five years before being introduced to computers and the Internet and web pages.  God, it really is weird how, looking back, it seems like everything that happened in my life was leading me to what I’m doing now.  

I’ll report back on whether Mrs. Wray writes back and what she says if she does.  I’m also going to ask my mom more about my school years so she can fill in the blanks for me.