This is my name-sake Kathleen O’Bryant with my grandmother. My grandmother loved roses.
Kathleen was not quite two years old when she died. The oldest child of my maternal grandparents. I can’t even imagine how my grandmother must have felt after she drowned. I know she sobbed and sobbed and pulled handfuls of her hair out. My uncle Toby (her second child) was born just before Kathleen’s death.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Repp. She was an older lady. The only thing I remember about her is that if she caught a bottom in the air she’d smack it. Usually this happened when 
someone was leaning across a desk to reach someone else’s desk. I think I even remember one day a fellow classmate giving her a swat for having a bottom in the air when she bent down to get something from a cupboard. The whole class was shocked and she was very mad.
I remember that the desks were arranged in groups of 4 or 5. They weren’t really lined up, they were pushed together with no space in the middle so it was almost as if we had one big desk instead of a series of small ones.
My mother tells me that Mrs. Repp started writing really negative/mean things on my papers and that they became concerned. I know that in first grade I was diagnosed with dyslexia and my parents and others determined that I should repeat the first grade. They told me that I was taking first grade again because my hands weren’t as big as Mellissa’s. I can remember noticing that I was smaller than her one day as we got on the bus to go home. I know I had trouble with the orientation of letters and I had a letter and number line across my desk. I can remember struggling with knowing the orientation of 5 and S and I could never remember which side was my left and which was my right. At sometime during elementary school I figured out that if I tried to snap, my right hand was always the hand that would snap. I used this as my guide and whenever I had to determine left or right I’d think about snapping. Maybe this is weird, but I still use a similar strategy to tell left from right—it’s like my brain just can’t automatically remember which is side is left and which is right, I assume that’s the dyslexia.
Repeating first grade meant I new set of classmates and Angie and Melissa moved on without me. It was probably at that point that I became very lonely. I can remember walking around the playground by myself thinking how I wished my friend Erin from church went to school with me because then I would have a friend to play with on the playground.
My first grade teacher was Mrs. Larsen, who seemed much much older than Mrs. Kofford, my kindergarten teacher. I think Mrs. Larsen had reddish hair, and it was piled in curls on her head. I was excited to be in something other than kindergarten (I promise I’m working up to blogging about kindergarten—it was a traumatic and mostly unhappy year for me and I don’t like thinking about it) and my best friend Kacie was in my class, too! I seem to remember our desks were in kind of a horseshoe shape and I sat on the right side in the back. We had those pasteboard pencil boxes (I think mine was blue but I can’t rightly remember) and used to make them into little houses by turning them on their side and using the lid either as a door or as a flip-up awning, propped up by our pencils. I had a big desk and liked keeping it neat on the inside; I remember putting things away carefully at the end of the day (I still do that at work and it bothers me when my things have been moved by someone else) so they’d be neat in the morning.
I don’t remember much of what we learned. More advanced math and printing practice, I’m sure, as well as a little Utah history and grammar. I do remember, though, having a pink eraser and those yellow pencils. I also remember that we had play time almost every day on a couple of big tables in the back of the room. We could bring clay from home—it was a set of that lovely oil-based clay in fat red, yellow, green, and blue strips—and we were required to put it away in our desks or cubbies near the tables when we were done playing. Probably cubbies. I remember rolling it out into snakes and making necklaces and bracelets with it. I was careful not to mix my colors too much and was annoyed when the boys mixed the colors into a big gray-brown mass and Mrs. Larsen took it away from us. I was sad when she took the container that mom had given me to put my clay in; I always felt that was unfair because it wasn’t me who messed up the clay.
I seem to remember that there was at least one boy who ate paste on a regular basis…
I’m not sure if this memory is from first grade or not, but I remember being on a bench on the playground under one of the cottonwood trees and seeing a nun playing with or watching a group of children. I’m not sure how I knew she was a nun, but I somehow recognized her long black dress and veil.
Like I said, I don’t remember much (it will probably come back to me) but overall I liked Mrs. Larsen and the classroom felt friendly and nice, which any classroom would have after kindergarten…
For most things, I’m pretty flexible. I find what I like best, and I tend to roam around. I have a few preferences, but they’re based on product performance or my taste at the moment rather than loyalty to any brand. So I’ll start with what I use currently, then I’ll finish with brands I’m picky about.
For toothpaste, I currently use Aquafresh Extreme Clean Freshening Action. It’s a solid clean! My gum of choice is generally the dark blue Extra (sugar-free). I use Old Spice deodorant and aftershave (sometimes alternating with Aqua Velva). I like the plain yellow Bic disposable razors. I get haircuts at Sport Clips; they do a better job on average, and my one experience with an old-time barbershop here in Knoxville didn’t go well. I like the new white Mt. Dew. I lean more toward Mercedes than BMW these days, but if I had to choose, I might just get a Porsche. The Challenger is hotter than the Mustang or the Camaro. I buy Levis because I know how they fit and have my size memorized. I generally use Logitech peripherals, but I really love the old Keytronic keyboards. I buy OEM spark plugs; whatever was in the engine when it left the factory is fine.
I’ve said many a time that I will weep if ever Pace Picante Sauce is discontinued. I use it on a wide variety of foods. It’s a real staple. I generally dislike other flavors of store-bought salsa. I make sure we have TWO back-up bottles so we never run out.
On a food-related note, I like Triscuits. The generic version will not do.
I love Camelbak. I’ve got four of their packs, for different occasions. I have two bottles, one for the gym and one for work. All the kids have their own bottle, because they are relatively spill-proof. I got my first Camelbak right after I got home from my mission. It was such a life-changer for hikes and biking that I never looked back.
I’m pretty loyal to DishNetwork for my TV. Lots of people say I’m silly, but I’ve had everyone else, and the darn system just works well. It’s not the brand so much as everything else is worse, I guess.
I always have some faLAAAMING Cheetos.
I really like Panasonic Lumix cameras, but my next one will probably be a Sony (it’s waterproof, dustproof, shockproof, freezeproof!)
Other than that, I can’t think of anything. Any of the above will change when something more awesome comes out.
I loved kindergarten, which is a good thing because we moved and then I started not much later. My teacher was Mrs. Wagner and I liked her very much. I was on the “C” track (we did year-round) and that meant I sat at the green table. It was very exciting for me to ride the bus to and from school. I remember Mom and Bethani waiting for me to come home, either at the bus stop or at the back door. I used to try to be the first one home, but Annie Reimschussel lived one house down from the corner we were dropped off at while I lived two houses down and had to cross the street. I do remember that there was a bus just for the kindergarten children, so I didn’t ride with Heidi and Zach until later. The kindergarten students also had their own little bathroom, so we didn’t have to go far when the time for going came. That must have been an adventure for the teacher.
The year I started, they had built a new playground just for the kindergarten children. One of the toys was a climbing toy that had blue and yellow rubber around chains. We played a game called “alligator” on those where the alligator under the toy could chomp you if you were on the wrong-colored rung. There was also a fun teeter-totter/rocker toy. It only held two at a time, and I suppose there were occasional conflicts because we didn’t get to play with it every recess. I remember one recess that I wandered over to the big kids playground to see if I could find Heidi or Zach. I think I found Heidi and she took me back to the kindergarten playground (she wasn’t mad at me or anything, but she got me back to where I needed to be before I was missed).
We also had playtime inside. The most coveted toy was the big cardboard brick blocks; there was often a boy/girl rivalry over those because the girls wanted it to be a kitchen/house and the boys wanted it to be a fort (aren’t we conditioned young for some things?). There was also a talking phone with Sesame Street characters, but that may have been a toy I had at home.
The class next door had eggs and then baby chicks which we got to visit. That was very exciting.
I remember that once I had to go to the nurse’s office because I started coughing and couldn’t stop. Mom notes in my baby book that I had haemophilus that year and I think that cough was the first sign of it.
1985 was also the year that introduced Whitney Houston to our house because Mrs. Wagner used “Greatest Love of All” for our Kindergarten graduation. At the graduation ceremony, I received the “Care Bear” award because I was so considerate of my fellow students. I also received some sort of award for excellence in reading.
This was also the year that Mom worked on the Ramses exhibit. In her notes in my baby book, she talked about how I studied and studied the exhibition guide and looked very carefully for my favorite piece when it came time to see the exhibit. It was the “Silver and Gold Vessel with Goat Handle.” I still have the poster Mom and Dad bought me.
Well, I have only a few memories of Kindergarten at Huntington Elementary. My teacher was Mrs. Richards, and I remember some of the toys. There was one toy that was always hard to get when it was play time. It was a little Tonka back-hoe like the one below:
I have some flashes of memory from the playground and the classroom, and I can even remember some of the kids, thought not their names. I could dig out my pictures, I suppose.
There’s one incident that I think happened in Kindergarten. One of the kids was flipping the bird, and seeing as I had no idea what that meant, I started doing it too. I was very bewildered when Mrs. Richards sharply rebuked me: “What do you think your father would have to say if he saw you doing that?!” Anyway, that was how I learned “flipping the bird” was bad.
I can’t remember anything about kindergarten. I know I went to Clinton Elementary School for kindergarten and that I did not have Mrs. Oberlander (she was the kindergarten teacher for several of my siblings), but I don’t even remember who my teacher was.
Yes, our very aged father can remember back into the dark ages when he went to kindergarten, but I cannot remember a single thing about it.
I can remember Isaac’s Kindergarten. . .
I can remember having a Lite-Brite. We had at least two kinds of wooden blocks (the kind with letters on them and the 
kind that you could stack and build with). I collected Barbies at one point when I was young. My brother had GI Joes. I had a few My Little Pony toys, my friend Erin had a larger collection of them. I can remember having some Little People sets including the Sesame Street house (without the characters), and a barn. We had a Little People mail truck with plastic letters that went with a set with a police station where you could wind the crank on top to make a siren noise. My grandma O’Bryant had this Little People boat that I spent many hours playing with in the bathtub. My grandma Bird bought me lots of collectable dolls.
I can remember spending lots of time playing outside on the swingset or exploring the woods across the street. We liked to ride our bikes on a circular street across the street from our house as well and we regularly took walks along the street feeding grass to the cows and horses by our house. We liked to hide out in the cornfield behind our house. We’d sometimes knock over a few stalks to make a little house in the middle of the field.
The first toys I can remember playing with are the old wooden Fisher Price “Little People”. I know I had dolls and stuffed animals, but I remember so many adventures with Zach and that Little People camper. There was a mother and a father, a bad boy (because his hat was on sideways) named Butch, a good boy in a yellow hat we named Zach, a girl in a green dress we named Heidi, and a girl with yellow hair and a red dress whose name tended to change. There were also two dogs, identical except that one of them was missing an ear; I’m not sure if WE broke the ear or what, but I don’t remember that dog NOT having a broken ear. The dog with the broken ear was, obviously, older, and so we named him Pepper after grandpa’s black terrier-wirehair-mutt-like dog. Pepper was older than our malamute, Sammy, so we named the other dog Sammy. We had so much fun playing with those Little People! Their camper had a big rowboat on the top and the truck made a wonderful clicking noise when we pushed it around; the truck also had a little gizmo in the front seats that would bounce the people up and down.
Later on, our cousin Darci gave us her Little People castle, which had everything a castle needed: a dragon, a carriage, two horses, a king, a queen, a prince, and a princess, not to mention the knave (he had a Robin Hood-type hat and a rather rakish Errol Flynn mustache) and all the fun furniture. The carriage is long gone and the beds’ foam died several years ago, but the horses are more or less intact. The castle had a dungeon with a trap door, a secret panel behind the fireplace, and a hidden chamber behind the stairs. It also had a drawbridge and towers. We’d sometimes try to saddle the pink dragon, but it never really worked because the saddle was made for the horses. There are a lot of pretends inside that castle, and it was fun to watch various children over the years play with it and have some of the same pretends. I hope it’s always at mom and dad’s house.
I also had sewing cards (perforated, with yarn ribbons to weave in and out), My Little Pony, various Barbies, stuffed animals, and the Playmobil hospital set (Zach had the cowboy and Indian set, and, unlike the Little People, we’d often combine the two sets into one huge set!), as well as various dolls, blocks, and Hot Wheels.
We may not have ever gotten a Lite Brite, but we had a lot of fun using our imaginations to tell stories with the toys we had…and sometimes Mom and Dad would let us leave our set-ups out for several days at a time!
I never did team sports. I don’t remember ever really wanting to, and I never enjoyed sports in Young Women–I hated being told “good try” when I totally screwed up and dropped the ball/missed the basket/didn’t run fast enough. It didn’t help that a couple of girls my age in the ward were pretty athletic and good at sports. I probably played only one game of each of the sports we played in YW and then I was done. Thank goodness Mom never made me go more than one or two times!
I also never really liked PE in junior high and high school; I usually ended up in the class with the girls who were on all the sports teams and I felt awkward and stupid playing against them. I only really enjoyed tennis, badminton, shooting baskets (not the actual basketball games they made us play) or refereeing, running ladders (go figure), aerobics, playing catch when we did softball, and the juggling we learned in 9th grade. Anything else I tried to avoid. I’d pretend to get hit in dodge ball just so I could sit out and didn’t have to worry about one of the mean girls clocking me in the head with those red waffly balls.
Which brings us to the “sports injuries” I suffered: I got hit in the head with just about every sports ball ever made. I remember walking to my second or third grade classroom at Huntington Elementary and getting whacked in the head with a kickball. It startled me and made me jump, but it didn’t really hurt that badly. Once in junior high, during the softball unit, the teachers had us stand in two rows facing each other so we could catch and throw. I liked catching and was decent with an underhand pitch and I was standing next to my friend Kristen (who happened to be very good at just about every sport available in junior high). I think we were talking and I wasn’t really looking at the girl across from me and didn’t notice the ball was coming at my nose until too late. Fortunately, although the softball hit me right between the eyes, it neither broke my nose nor my glasses. I remember being worried that my nose would start bleeding, but all I did was sneeze and that was it. No pain, no blood, nothing but a sneeze.
I guess I didn’t care to play sports enough to actually get injured, just embarrassed. I took a ballroom dance class in college that I enjoyed, and I really liked archery even though I couldn’t pull a compound bow and used a recurve instead. I’m sure it was more fun because it was MY idea and I wasn’t forced to do pull-ups or “fun runs”…
