Second grade started the great movement of our class. The Spanish Immersion being a new program in the city would go every couple of years without a home until they found us an empty classroom somewhere in the city. This year we moved from Birch Land Elementary to North Davis Elementary. Later in the fifth grade we would move again to West Davis Intermediate. In the Second grade we were also put into a portable classroom, which adds to the wonder how long it took them to find us a home.

Portable classrooms are weird. At least in town I think everyone from my generation on has had at least one class in one. The kind that were coming up in the 1980s were meant to be temporary, but I am pretty sure some almost 40 years later that portable is still on the school’s campus. The rooms are weird, every step you take makes the whole building wince. Because of this though I can kind of remember things that happened in this classroom a little better than the more solid rooms.

Now to this point our Kindergarten class was either next door or almost next door to our first grade room at Birch Lane. The world in front of the classroom was the playground and we knew where we belonged. The move felt strange. Then we had to deal with a portable room, which is like a box up on stilts.

This classroom would feel different then from the others I had had to that point. We had an entry way full of cubies, then a big narrow classroom where we sat in rows most of the year instead of table groups. Every step someone took would slightly shake the whole building due to the boxes cheaper materials. But after an adjustment period the old norms slid back in.

I maintained my bad attitude through second grade though. I fought on Christopher Columbus’s side during our Columbus Day activity because why would you ever side with the incorrect side on the shape of the earth, who would want to be a flat earther? Luckily in this case, the teacher moved me from the character I was supposed to be on the side of and let me circumnavigate the classroom with our stand in for Columbus.

Or stand in for Columbus was a kid named Andrew, who at that point I was down with supporting even though since pre-school we had a tumultuous relationship. If I had a bad attitude from time to time I don’t know how you explain what Andrew’s acting out was. If I ever find the picture from our pre-school class where he is throwing sand at the camera I would scan it in immediately. But that was him when we were little. He was the physical abuse kid in class. Notoriously, which I can remember a bit of, but my Mom remembered well, was when he tried to drown in me at the Rec Pool during some sort of school trip to go swimming.

But here by second grade if he was to speak out against the class in a role play, and was on the side of right, well, I just refused to be on the side of wrong. And I guess I was loud enough to get to captain one of the three ships. It’s funny for a holiday that is now glossed over, Columbus day this year and the next having mores details in my mind than Halloween.

My need to speak out and act the fool from time to time was exacerbated that year by the fact I achieved perfect attendance as well. This would be the one and only school year that would ever happen, I guess I peeked too soon. But it meant that Senorita Wellings had to deal with me day in day out. And by second grade there was sort of a boy competition to see who was the most whatever it was we were supposed to be. My guess is over half the boys thought themselves the king of the classroom and so comments and things had to be made or done to prove it.

Maybe there is something too second grade itself. In Kindergarten I remember friend groups being everyone and school being this new exciting thing. As first grade moved along roles for students started to appear. There was the gumball/fortune telling day in first grade, where I broke those norms, which were mainly boys v girls, by writing a fortune that said “You will be friends with Andrew” and it going to one of the more antagonistic girls in class. Which in turn showed us the power of suggestion when for the second half of the day, the fortune came true!

But for the most part, first grade got us sliding into social groups and by the start of second grade they were defined. Andrew was loud and aggressive, Brian was the trend setter, David G. was the one that took the most abuse but seemed to fight back the hardest as well, Jason and David H. were followers, and I was the art/clown loud but not aggressive. There were more followers and but some of them were just waiting to find their spot, Ricky took another year or so to become another class clown and a fair amount of the kids, like Jim spent these first few grades following these norms before breaking out, mostly after elementary school.

That’s when Second grade introduces us to Wall Pogo, or Wall Ball, to the class. Before bouncy balls were only for two or four-square, now at the new school we had a giant green wooden wall to beat the ball against in competition. Recesses became a race to get in line for Pogo and hopefully never lose your king of the court crown once you got in, not much different than how the Street Fighter 2(SF2) arcade world would run in the 1990s.

See Wall Pogo, like four-square, involved someone knocking someone else out. If you could maintain being the knocker outer, you could play the entire recess break without having to wait in line. Unlike four square there were only two spots active at a time, so you couldn’t just stay in and watch others act out their drama, you had to be on your game.

This culture was hyper-aggressive when I look back on it in hindsight. I can honestly remember kids with less ability to hit a giant red ball still get in line for Pogo and when their turns came up, they would take their serve and get knocked out almost instantly, then sag their shoulders and return to the end of the line. Why didn’t they just go play something else? Seems the need to be in on fads when you’re little is more important than actual fun.

The line was also a terrible place to be in, almost as much as sitting in the grass during lunch. It was a vessel for the less athletic kids to practice their risqué stand up in an attempt to mask the fact they couldn’t stay in the game itself. I can remember detailed presentations on how to properly give someone the finger being taught in those lines. Along with many other ways to try and hurt someone’s feelings that you thought not worthy to be in the pogo game over you. The Wall Pogo line is probably where I learned the most colorful language of my life.  Maybe didn’t master it, but learned of it.

Wall Pogo thus becomes this education within education. The stuff schools try to act like they aren’t about, but in some ways or vital even if some aspects are bad. The Lord of the Flies mentality that ruled the line gives way to an education on how to interact in a hostile environment to kids. Whether parents liked it or not, and they did not, that above all else is where I can point to having the harden up if I was going to have friends through school. As negative as it sounds, that was socialization and we in the Spanish immersion were in an even more focused bubble.

We had just shifted schools. Not being able to keep up with insults and having thick skin and moving down the Senorita Wellings class totem pole was a death sentence for the next couple of years since we were also learning that we weren’t going to get to know other classes and kids as much. Every two years, we would be the new kids. Thus, our own pecking order was important.

This will cause a multitude of weird things to happen. Brian armed with a larger vocabulary than well David G. (which is an interaction I remember a lot of) was able to ride this into settings trends for the class that made things like origami cool. Which don’t get me wrong, origami is kind of neat, but I don’t think other kids our age in other classes were fighting over the spaces in the origami class being taught by the nerdy guy from the photomat.

This is an important trend. Because we have the outside trends that are huge now, it’s 1985, we are seven years old and action figures are not only having their hey-day but they are having all those afternoon cartoons we get to watch when we come home. Then there is the outside influence of adults and kids sports trying to get us into those. Then our pod of immersion kids are now forming into a order where other items are being thrown at us.

Origami like I said was on that formed this year and would be even bigger in third grade. With all the pressures a kid has when developing, the oddest in this case may be the Chinese junk.

Now most people are familiar with the “cootie catcher” or fortune teller. It’s almost as simple as the paper airplane. Little kids learn it, play with it, and the bottom couple inches of many 8 ½ x 11 inch pieces of paper get thrown in the trash (back then, recycling I guess now). But with our origami status being important in our class, the real pinnacle of cool was being able to make a perfect looking Chinese junk ship.

Interestingly I remember the junk ship goes through the steps of the fortune teller, as well as the paper swan, which was another important paper fold you must have by now. But the junk was sort of the last step along that ride. Most kids could do a decent swam, which was helped pushed by:

This created a time in my life when going to the stationary store, which was called Carousel, was a big deal to me. Going with mom and begging for an origami instructional book or just more of the fancy thing square paper that was so much easier to fold than notebook or copy paper.

Once again, I bring up how hard it is at seven to keep up with the joneses. I have my love and addiction to plastic men, in 1985 that means I have cleaned out paint buckets (what my mom made me use for storage beyond the toy bin) for Star Wars, He-Man, Gi Joe and Transformers, along with Lego, and Lincoln Logs (I have to be able to build bases and more stuff for them!). Then I am drawing all the time, so we need paper for that. Now we’ve introduced origami, which I want special paper for. What I a ton of money being dumped into nothingness. Luckily for the most part I was really into these things when I was into them and am sad at least with the action figures that some didn’t survive my childhood. The origami though was way too delicate to save, so I am surprised I could get Mom and Dad to release some funds for that, that which would just end up under my beg eventually.

That was second grade though, figuring out what you had to be able to keep up with. As I said, I do feel like the second grade was really where things like that start to come to a head, along with this pogo wall line culture. First grade was the edginess of using bad words, but now Kids were starting to understand how to actually lay insults with them onto someone. Kindergarten and First grade also had s a learning curve to realize who was who and what was making fun of you. Since not everyone understood the insults yet they didn’t always fire the way they were supposed to. So, kids had to stick to things like you’re fat or ugly, which at that age was almost always subjective.

Now we could say someone was fat like something or had an uncontrollable bowel issue that required countless fruitless flushes of a toilet. That latter being made into a song we kids sang on the way back to school from a walking field trip downtown one day, authored by Brain at David G’s expense. David’s crime that day, using the swing at the park too long for Brian’s liking.

 So, it should be no surprise that this was the year one kid felt so picked on that his parents and the school got together and called all the other parents. Who then in turn had to sit down with their own kids to tell them to stop. This caused a great amount of discourse about teasing not being okay. I can remember getting my lesson from Mom and Dad in the family room after they heard of everything. The problem was that complaining the way the kid did to his parents cemented the overall idea of who he was and what he was being picked on for in the first place.

Which in turn made that particular kid stand out from the rest of the boys and sort of excommunicating from what the boys in class called “friendship”. Because there was Boys vs. Boys, then next level was Boys vs. Girls, but above all else was Kid vs. Adults, and tattling broke the highest level of the struggle.

As kids we couldn’t really wrap our heads around the psychological aspect. What we knew is that everyone was mean, and he couldn’t cut it. Other kids endured their songs on the way back from field trips, why was this one student important? Because he named everyone else in classes name? So, it didn’t really help the situation, it just sort of drug that child’s name through the mud. He didn’t stick with the class after that year, which was probably for the best for him. It allowed a new start with new kids. One of the downsides of the class we were in was that it didn’t really change, we had the same lineup in kindergarten as we did in the second grade, so coming back for third with the moniker of a traitor to kid kind would have been tough to deal with.

After second grade I never really saw that kid much. One friend did hang out with him post then, but I don’t know if leaving our classroom changed his fortunes at all, or if he just jumped into a similar situation. From what I was learning in Sunday school at church, this was just how boys behaved with one another, thus I doubt it changed. The lesson being taught was get better at whatever was being judged or just don’t try and hang with the boys.

Now I don’t condone kid’s bad behaviors, but honestly anything I ever said, or anyone said to me from that age didn’t stick. There is a fair amount of boundary pushing being done at that age, and I understand adults need to show children what those boundaries are, however I think trying a new start was the proper way to deal with the issue. You can show kids the boundaries, at the same time trying to force them to stop for just one kids sake isn’t going to work. Little kids are strange, and it takes time for them to figure out how to mind their own business and sadly there is some instinctual part of us to poke at the weaker ones. When kids are little, they can grow out of it, what’s more disturbing is how many don’t seem to grow out of it anymore. But back to the past for now.

The other branch from this new understanding out how word play worked was lunchtime. If I recall most of the boys in class, which was around 14 or 15 of us would sit together, from what I remember out on the grass next to the lunch tables. There a child would try and tell jokes or demonstrate something they thought funny.

This was as simple as the invention of hallow-weenies, which was a process on hot lunch hot dog day, of taking the hot dog out of the bun, then using your milk straw to poke into the wiener, then remove the straw and blow out the core sample of the meat. What a thing to remember. The other end was the story joke. Here we learned about Inspector Pussy and the Big Chief, who could not fart. It was a smorgasbord of bad ideas and off color jokes that would shape a generation, all on the green grass of North Davis Elementary school.

Of course, second grade falling in the 1985-1986 school year also gave our teacher, Wellings, the task of going over the Challenger disaster the morning it happened. Probably one of the more profound things to have to deal with in class during that time. Not only was that particular shuttle launched hyped in school because of the teacher that was set to go into space with the shuttle crew, but also because my generation was really into space as something fun and exciting, so the total let down of the tragedy was hard for second graders to understand.

But since as I stated in first grade, we are now in some comprehension of the outside world, the tragedy was real, and the part most kids weren’t going to get was why something like that could happen in the first place. The Olympics, all of that which had formed to memory prior was also triumphant, this was a tale that had a setup to be the same and ended so badly that it was incomprehensible and made you wonder if the devil had more at play than Sunday school let on.

Both these world events a relatively small time span also reflected a lot upon what it was like as a little kid in the late Cold War era. The world outside our lives was super important. Beating the Soviets in hopes of non-nuclear annihilation. Mary Lou proved that, but now the space program, during it’s finest hour since the moon landing, sending a teacher in space to teach us kids from space, well not only a tragedy, but maybe things weren’t just moving in a positive non Armageddon direction. Which is such a weird world for someone who is seven to tie into folding paper cranes and during his own wars between Megatron and Darth Vader. War as a fantasy is fun to a little boy, but there was definitely comprehensive that outside of cartoons and movies it was the scariest thing that there could be, even scarier than getting yelled at!

New Trends wouldn’t slow down during this school year though. From these tiny catalogs from Scholastic books called Arrow, and another I had forgotten about until researching this a bit, Troll book clubs, that would get passed out to each student each month or so would form two big fads. One would be Zoobooks, always had to order one of those. And then Garfield books. Oh boy was that a thing.

 

image Garfield out to Lunch, all the rage of the Scholastic Book orders in 1986.

The new books for that school year were Garfield’s 11th and 12th. Which were Garfield Rolls On and Garfield Out to Lunch. I so far can only find an order for this year from Troll that has the special, Garfield in the Rough. It’s Out to Lunch, that I remember being really excited about. Probably because it was a new release in 1986 and I think just about every, boy at least, ordered a copy.

It would have been extremely tactless to not have the new Garfield for silent reading time. Our now refined senses of humor understood insults, we got pushing Odie off the table, we could see that Jon was a loser, this was quality comedic reading for our second grade aficionados.

Then at this point Garfield had been out since 1978 was all so getting a chance to back order older books made Garfield books like toy collecting. You had to have each one. I think I managed about half of them by school years end. Garfield would maintain a tight hold on young readers in the Spanish Immersion class until 1987 gave us Calvin and Hobbes. Honesty it wasn’t even until later with the second Calvin and Hobbes book Something Under the Bed is Drooling do I remember it becoming popular. And honestly it didn’t stop Garfield books from being cool, just diminished its importance.

Zoobooks were another story. I loved animals. In 1984 I got my own dog, and he was awesome. And then there were stuffed animals, something that had been around since the dawn of my time. Stuffed bears and the like. Now with Zoobooks I was able to learn about animals and make favorites. Koalas, Pandas, Racoons, you know nothing major.

Now I needed so many things. At the time Mervyns carried a home section with a small selection of stuffed friends. As look would have it around this time in my life we found a Racoon and eventually a Panda, which I named after friend in class, because I was loyal to the cause! These large plush friends became pseudo pillows and friends away from the stresses of school and sports. Someone to hang out with at night when I got sent unfairly to bed after the primetime sitcoms. Well and with that I needed a comforter to match my personality right? Well later, probably Christmas of 1986, which is now really straying from 1985, I got a Garfield zebra stripped comforter to add to my bunk bed. This blanket, still with us in 2023 and hopefully beyond, although it is pretty beat up these days.

Not my floppy friends, but pictures I found of the same make of my racoon and panda. Unfortunately they would met a fate of getting stuck outside in a box in the rain during storage transition time at the house and get destroyed. Then a picture from the 90s of Chris M. on my bed laying on top of the Garfield blanket. While sheets, the next picture shows the pattern of the comforter in better detail.

Favorite animals were a big thing to cover too. I think it is that age where we separate the sociopaths from the rest of us. And its love of animals. Decades later I would sit in a car with a certain second grader waiting to pick up her brother and we would do animal quizzes, showing me that it wasn’t just a weird thing I got into, but the Zoobooks and stuffed animals that were around kids that age made animals very important.

I remember once on book distribution afternoon, marching around the portable having everyone tell me their favorite animal to check with an article in Zoobooks claiming the Koala was usually peoples favorite cute animal. Sure, seemed important at the time. Worth marching around that shakey little class room.

The shake of that classroom though ingrains things. I think it was David H’s mom had come to class near the holidays to tell us all about Hanukkah, and whereas I think it was the next year we did potato pancakes, she brough something that needed to be cut up to serve in class and I can remember the room shaking every time the knife came down. But of course, I was just excited at whatever the treat was, while some of the other boys argued the finer point of which holiday was better, Hanukkah or Christmas and David H explaining he got to do both.

Not for me, just Christmas, and a hard one to follow the year that was 1984.

Image: The much-needed Die-Cast Voltron set and the mysterious overseas version of the Constructicons from Christmas 1985.

1985’s holiday would hold the achievement of getting me that die cast Voltron. A toy so important to me that during an afternoon at day care it made me commune with God to manifest me the toy. I keep saying that keeping up with everyone’s trends was really important to me when I was little. And this was where it got to its peak. Mom and Dad, thanks a lot in part to Dad getting donations into the store from people jumping fads, had been able to keep me up a bit with some of the other richer kids in class. But there was just so much going on at all times and I never stopped liking any of them.

Now there are so many cool cartoons, and the Brians of this world are getting Voltron’s and Andrew has so many transformers and even though they are dying out I want this new Luke Skywalker that comes in a stormtrooper disguise, and, and I am just can’t take how much I need! Finally, that day at day care, in an attempt to satisfy the need and relieve my parents the responsibility they claimed was so hard I decided I would ask God to help out a little bit. In some ways not my finest moment when it comes to greed, but being raised with church I think it is probably a mental space everyone has to go to. I think a child that is told ever Sunday that God can do all, has to at least try once in his/her young life to test it. Suffice to say, people can interpret me getting it later on Christmas as an answer to my prayer or as a lesson a kid had to learn that you can’t have God fix all your problems.

Either way, getting the nicer die cast version for Christmas was immense. I can’t overstate how much I loved that toy, maybe even more than the show. If Star Wars gave me robots with personality and 1984 gave us robots that transform, 1985 showed us that transforming robots can combine, and make bigger robots.

It was another one of these combiners that also started lighting a fire under me. I don’t know when these transformers first started showing up during 1985, but it was long enough that I was so into trying to get the whole set so I could build the big combined robot, Devastator our of them.

I remember running down to the basement at Discoveries downtown where they kept the toys to peruse the selection. I had a mad fever for them. The first one I got was the Bulldozer and the love didn’t die down. I can remember some event at the house that involved the backyard where the toys had come up, and then there were just friends birthday parties, I think I must have got Mom to buy at least one for someone else, making me internally jealous. It was hard times man!

 

The Constructicons were, in the U.S. cartoon and toys, green. The couple I had procured already were that color as well. So, on Christmas day I was happy when I got all six robots to make the giant robot they transformed into. I was puzzled though. Instead of coming on cardbacks like the ones I already had, each came in a little box with writing I couldn’t read and were different colors as seen in the image above next to Voltron.

When looking to get me the set I wanted so bad. Somehow Dad managed to get the overseas or I guess more accurately the original Japanese versions. If I knew what I did now I would have asked him how on earth he pulled that feat off, since at the time we didn’t have eBay and other avenues for imported toys. Sadly, with Dad’s passing in 2013 and Mom not having a clue to where he got them, that tale is lost to time. That is one of the reasons I started writing these childhood stories down, was because this was a feat and story, I should have been able to carry on, what avenues my Dad had found for getting Christmas presents.

Image: Chris M. and Ryan playing Final Fantasy 7.

 Fads in the 80s, I keep talking about them, it’s 1985, it’s time I start to mention another one. Video games. Let us begin, since this is a long history I have skirted around so far. I liked playing games as a kid. I don’t remember when this started but I can vividly remember playing “Husker Du” which was just a memory game with mom and dad lot when I was little. Then there were games like Stratego that I really enjoyed playing. But I was a kid born into a world that had just seen Star Wars, and Straw-Hat Pizza had the original Star Wars arcade game. And although just a tiny lad at the time the idea of playing games on the television screen was enthralling.

Here is where the early years get confusing. My mom wasn’t a big fan of what she was reading about video games and kids consumption of them. So, we never splurged for an Atari when those were at their peak in the early 1980s. One friend had one, but we were little and didn’t get to play it much. I had resigned myself to just liking them when we went to other kids birthday parties that had an arcade at whatever venue they were using. Then Dad saved the day, unintentionally.

Deviation from topic number one. Dad had a great tolerance for being bored. He notoriously was a good sleeper during church. So, it was only fitting that Dad found a way to benefit off this skill. Sales pitches, more accurately those that salespeople setup with the promise of some free item if you just come listen to them for hours as they try and sell you a time-share or some other such garbage. Dad would see free thing, take a long nap on a Saturday and say no to signing up for whatever they were pitching. Receive free item, straight profit.

Thus, it came to pass that Dad came home one night with a Texas Instrument 99/4a (T.I.) (I had to look that up don’t worry):

image 44 A boxed T.I. computer, same make and model as the one Dad brought into the house. And the load screen for Hunt the Wumpus.

The T.I. was not a video game console, it was a “home computer”. But see that little cartridge bay on the side? One could buy cartridges for it that covered popular games like Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, to more specialized titles like Hunt the Wumpus. Dad had accidentally bought a video game console.

And so, the video games got in the L street house. Dad would just get an outright console later on from another such sales adventure when he brought home the Odyssey 2. Mom had been softened up on the video games when she found she couldn’t help but play Donkey Kong, and the Odyssey 2 had some spelling oriented word games which made her soften even more.

But then there was the Nintendo. Showing up in the U.S. when I was about eight years old. Everyone that was anyone in my class was getting one. However once again this Nintendo was where Mom was going to draw the line on these insipid machines. She ended up being steadfast on this one. Perhaps it was the price tag, or maybe something she read in the newspaper, we will never know. But she would not cave into the Nintendo pressure.

The years would go by, and I had to play Nintendo at my friend’s homes instead. When one of my elementary school chums, Jason, got Zelda I would go over to his house and then basically just watch him play, since well, kids are like that. Finally in 1989 this would all change. I would turn eleven this year and as we know, I got me a paper route. Eleven happened to be the minimum age one could be to get a route which is why I had to wait until that birthday. I used one of my first big paychecks to enter the world of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Mom allowed this since I worked and paid for the console myself. Once I got the NES, I realized I liked to game, and I wasn’t going to let being a kid stand in the way of me having them. To this day (2021) my parents only ever bought me one console, the PlayStation in 1996, every other one I bought on my own so I could have it when I wanted it.

I worked out a lot of ways to present the next batch of stories. This will be divided into what I call eras, I know it’s more generally referred to as generations when discussing video game consoles. But I didn’t go all in on all the consoles. I have already alluded to these “Eras” a little bit, here they are in depth. These eras are most helpful in defining different times from the early 90s until 2007, which is perfect for what I am doing here.

Now the reason I wrote about these consoles and added it to the 1985 section is a little arbitrary. I don’t know when we got the Odyssey and TI. However, I feel like we didn’t have it when Transformers was the new cool thing, and thanks to the internet I know the TI 99/4a was discontinued in 1984. This makes sense that early 1985 could have been when Dad managed to get the one he got for free, and why he was able to get games at the thrift store for it so easily. Both system came to us after their time, but cost dad nothing more than an afternoon being sold a time share he wasn’t going to sign up for. Good call Dad.