Sophia, you're younger than I am, and I know that divorce was a common-enough issue for teachers when I was in junior high in the late '70s, so I don't know why she was so stubborn about your family!! Grrr.

IOcutevideoN, climbing kittens who love to play with toilet paper. They're the same kittens who love to run under doors.

I hated that sad lonely house that wasn't my house at all. That was one of the first times I felt like my family wasn't right because I didn't have a dad.

Aw.

We never did anything like that in my school, but you know, I'm sure grandparents would have been included because so many of us lived in two-family houses with our grandparents! And there were at least a couple of kids in my class who didn't live with their fathers, so.

Kathy and Jesse and sarameg-- I had the misfortune, all through primary school, of having teachers that retired the year after I had them. That would have been in 1978, and the teacher was at least 60, if not older. I also lived in a really small town, and my one friend that I knew by 3rd grade who had parents who were divorced had a remarried mother. It got better later-- that mom got redivorced, but still, until high school, she and I were the only ones with weird families who were also poor.

My family tree was always broken on my dad's side. His parents never married and he has tons of half-siblings and no full. Not only did I not understand the intricacies, I couldn't get reliable details from either parent, and I really didn't like bringing it up at my hoity-toity English school.

That's nuts. My grammar school classes were pretty non-diverse, but there were always at least a couple of kids out of the norm in one way or another. Like how there were two kids in my 6th grade class who didn't have to use Christmas tree colors to paint the triangular napkin holders we were making....

Can I just say that I adore my DH? He was off today and took care of the dry cleaning and the grocery shopping so I wouldn't have to. While at Publix he found the mini chocolate eclairs that I absolutely adore and greeted me when I got home with a glass of wine and chocolate eclairs. I think I'll keep him for a few more years.

I kinda love the guy in the cat climbing video. There are several others featuring him wearing the kittens

Also (i didn't mean to make this mememe, but this has started me thinking) my mother, who I now know was well meaning and did the best she knew how and really loved me sort of mucked it up, because I had about a million of these moments between kindergarten and second grade, and I pretty much had sucessfully dealt with it by repression and lying because she didn't answer my questions, and then in second grade, she sat me down and wanted to tell me about my father. And then I freaked out and refused to hear it, which hurt her deeply, and she has basically refused to talk about it ever since. When we were filling out FAFSA's and I didn't know what to put for my father and was flipping out in case he was included financially, she let me know he was dead. When I was in therapy and asked her and my uncles about it, my one uncle refused to tell me, my other uncle was too young to know but told me all I could, and she basically told me that she wanted to have a baby, so she slept with someone to get pregnant and have me because she wanted a baby. Which might have been nice to know earlier, since I spent a long time convinced that she had been raped and was unable to have an abortion, since Roe vs Wade was passed just about when I was conceived. So my family is kinds f-ed up, but I didn't know it when I wanted my family to be in the house!

I went to a Lutheran school from 1st through 8th grades. We had a class that was about 25 kids, on average. As far as I can remember, everyone's parents were still together, for all 8 years.

ION, Señor Sock used to climb me like that when he was a kitten. When he was older he'd do this flying leap to my upper body, and climb to my shoulders from there. He loved to ride along on my shoulders, seeing the world from a whole new perspective....

My birth certificate reads "Mother: Unknown" and "Father: [insert grandfather's name]."

Yeah, I had some weird episodes with the whole family tree thing in classes, too. However I was an overconfident, cheeky young kid and I don't remember it bothering me. I still have a kindergarten drawing where it's me and my dog. Above them, scrawled in bright orange crayon, it reads "Java's family".