September 17, 2025
Dear Kerrie,
Do you remember going to the recreation center to go swimming when you were little? We were like 6 or 7. I don’t know what happened in your family, but my mom would drop me and my brother off and say, “Watch your little sister, and don’t drown. I’ll pick you up at 6:00, be out front.” Then we would go into the building, and my brother would say, “Don’t drown, get out of the pool at 5:30, I’ll meet you out front.” And I was on my own for the rest of the afternoon. Just little-ole-6-year-old-me with a bunch of strangers in a giant public pool. I would monkey crawl around the edges, I’d stand on my hands in the shallows, I’d jump off the diving board in the deep end, and doggie paddle over to the ladder. I’d push myself off the side wall and see how far I could swim underwater before coming up for a breath- but then one time you came up to me and said, “Hey, Shannon.”
I said, “Hi!”
You said, “You want to play?”
And I said, “Yeah!”
And we talked about all the things!
We talked about our first-grade teacher- I don’t remember her name, but how she used to walk around with a metal-barreled permanent marker and whack us on our heads if we weren’t behaving appropriately. We remembered that boy who had peed his pants in class- and how the pee got all over the floor.
I moved to Gill Village that summer before second grade. I started going to First District Elementary School. I met and played with all the Jones ’ sisters and cousins. My second-grade teacher’s name started with an ‘H,’ it was hard to spell, as were her ridiculous spelling words- how is a second grader supposed to remember how to spell “ornament?” :) Apparently, I was not as “Hooked on Phonics” as I was supposed to be by that time in my academic career. She sent me off to a special reading class with Mr. Miller, who was a nice man, but I resented being in the “special reading class.” My only recourse was to get up to level in reading, then surpass the required level, and spend the rest of my public school education with an above-average reading level. Nobody cared, especially Mrs. Habakkuk, or whoever she was.
My most magical teacher was Mrs. Richmond in third grade. She must have been near retirement by the time I met her. She had salt-and-pepper hair and orthopedic shoes, but she rivaled Mrs. Frizzle in my opinion. She took us everywhere- and some places twice. We walked around town like we owned the streets (always with a buddy.) That was probably the year Justin decided he liked me- (liked-liked me) and I was not down for it. I wonder what became of him.
When did you move to Gill Village? Was it in fourth grade? My homeroom teacher was pregnant, but she thought we didn’t notice, like we didn’t know where babies came from. She didn’t know where WE came from. I don’t remember the rest of the year with the substitute, but who could forget Mrs. Moon? She was a character from Scooby-Doo. She seemed to be well past retirement with silver hair, and a skeletal frame. Her shrill voice calling us to attention and her exaggerated gestures are etched in my mind. Was that the year we watched “Tron” in class? I hated it. Is that the year we read “Old Yeller?” I also hated it.
I don’t remember much from fifth grade. Was that the year we were in class together? There were two Shannons and two Carrie/Kerries. One time the teacher was surprised I couldn’t hear the difference in pronunciation between Kerrie and Carrie. I thought she was Crazy. Remember how we used to walk to the Friends of Youth building after school? It was down by the Jr. High behind Diamond Park. We would go bowling once a week and then to Friday night movies. They tried to keep us in line- but everyone knew about those Gill Village kids.
Do you remember all the winter days we spent on the kitchen floor playing jax? Do you remember our brothers being friends, so whatever house they went to- we went to the other house? Can you even imagine how many hours we spent connected to our corded phones gossiping the news of all 10-12 year olds in small towns? Girl, we wore out the pavement running between your lot and my lot. RUNNING, because who knows what was in those (very thin) woods just behind the fence.
Whatever was in those woods did not bother us in the least when we were together, in the daytime because how much trouble would we be in if our moms knew how many hours we spent in the woods exploring and picking berries? Do you remember the F*CK Rock in the woods just behind the park shed? I remember that there was a sweet little wild blueberry bush growing near it. That bush was probably stunted by spray paint and insinuation.
In sixth grade, we wore stirrup pants and roll-on lip gloss. Remember how we would bite the rollerball casing so that the gloss would practically pour out onto our lips? I’m sure we blinded our teachers under those fluorescent light bulbs.
When we started seventh grade, we were grown, weren’t we? We rode the bus with the high schoolers. Did you ride the bus with me? I remember watching a guy smoke a joint as he walked up
to the bus. Then, even though there were plenty of empty seats, he’d sit next to me, and I would wonder if I could get high from secondhand smoke or if I was going to smell like weed for the rest of the day. Girl, where were you on those days? I know you rode the bus with me sometimes, because I remember getting off the bus and immediately scanning the courtyard for Josh Estes. (Josh Estes, the recipient of our mad love in 7th grade, do you remember? and how we terrorized him with our prank calls?) Scanning the courtyard became much easier when I got my first pair of glasses that winter.
We had one class together in 7th grade. It was a reading class, and it was only for one semester. That was probably good for us because I remember we drove the teacher crazy. I got so many detentions from that teacher (because we were talking or not paying attention) that my mother wrote a note to the teacher to tell her to find another way to punish me because she was tired of having to go pick me up after detention. In the fall of 1987, we listened to “Faith” by George Michael on the radio, and we were hooked. George Michael was everything, and I would sit on the floor in my room with my tape recorder and my radio trying to catch his songs to record.
In the summer of 1988, I moved away- and soon we were teens- no longer with little girl gossip and problems, but more sophisticated and unrelenting gossip and problems. We grew up and made allies and friends, we had boyfriends, and adventures, jobs, careers, husbands, children, and watched our girls go through the same things on a different, more dramatic set. Now we are grown; now we are old. How did that happen? Were we in seventh grade just a few years ago?
We were the children of the 1980s. We didn’t laugh at the kids who couldn’t afford the next best thing- because we were those kids. We didn’t let those kids laugh at us either. We got our free lunches at school, and accepted the label “one of those Gill Village kids.” It was like a badge of shame and honor and a threat all at the same time. We should have had T-shirts made.
