The Grandma Jar

This isn't a Grandma Jar question, but my blog got so long and autobiographical that I thought I should include it here. Memories are magical things—in moments a word, a place, or a thought can transport one back in time to a place where past events return in vivid technicolor. Cove Mountain has always been a special place for me; so many of my favorite people inhabit the mountain. In many ways my whole life can be cataloged by Cabin trips—It’s the constant in my life. People come and go, I grow (and grow older), we may move from here to there, but the Mountain is always the same—solid, immovable—absorbing and preserving the memories of a lifetime. Last weekend the John Larsen family, in mass, descended on the Mountain for a weekend of family, fun, food, and frivolity. As we drove up the dugway I was flooded by memories of past trips and people. On the dugway I re-lived the terror of the 1981 trip when I was riding up the mountain with Dad and Mark Crawford was in his tr...

Wow! I must be running with a theme. The second slip of paper that I pulled from the jar asks how I feel or felt about school. Well, for the most part I loved and love (present tence) school. Ironically, I never thought that I was a very good student or that I was very smart but I loved the challenge of learning. In first grade I was tested for dyslexia. Although they determined that I am not dyslexic, Aunt Carolyn did graduate work on this disorder because so many family members have been tested. She determined that we are just border-line dyslexic and hence we pass the tests. Well that was a long-winded way of explaining why I struggled somewhat in school. (Researchers have discovered that people with dyslexia generally have higher IQ's than the general population so I'm not sure what excuse to use now.) In 7th grade my math teacher, Mr. Foote, required every student to complete the multiplication table (1's thru 12's) in under 5 minutes. If you couldn't do it i...