It does not look like I have any photos taken during my second grade. It could be partially because my mom was a lot into the home movies at that time. In fact, pretty much all home movies I have were filmed in 1971 – 1973 (See here, here and here).

When I was in the second grade, I started to develop myopia, and for some reason (although everybody in the family wore glasses), it was a world-class tragedy. The ophthalmologist wanted to try some new methods on me. I do not know what was the logic behind these methods, but both of them were essentially building more obstacles :). The first was that when I was reading or writing, I had to wear bifocal glasses, which had “plus” instead of “minus” on the bottom. I believe that the idea was that I would “try harder” and my vision would become better, which obviously just made things worse.

Another torture was of the opposite kind. Three times a week, I had to come to the ophthalmologist’s office and spend twenty or thirty minutes staring at the table for vision checking while wearing more “minus” than I needed. Again, I think that this way, I was supposedly “training” my eyes “to try harder.” It took a lot of time from my life (fortunately for my mom, she didn’t have to take me there; the doctor’s office was on the same street where I lived, but still, I remember how annoyed I was by the fact that I had to waste this time and by the torture itself).

Other than that, my life was pretty dull. I walked to school in the morning, walked back home at 1 PM or 2 PM depending on whether I had English class on that day, warmed up my late lunch, did my homework, which sometimes was very time-consuming and always boing, most times (unless I would forget), I did my chores, which included watering the house plants, dusting the surfaces and sweeping the floor in our room (if you already lost the context, mom and I shared a room in an apartment where my father’s family lived). I also had to shine my boots, because mose of the year, the weather outside required boots.

Whatever free time I had, I spent on reading. During my elementary school years, my mom started to attend different evening classes, and as far as I remember, she had something almost every evening. I remember that one year, she studied French, and another year, she studied German (I do not think she succeeded much in any of these languages, but she tried). Also, she was attending sewing classes and knitting classes. I was quite happy to be left “unattended,” and spent all this time reading. The bulk of my reading was Alexander Dumas, Fenimore Cooper and Walter Scott, with occasional Conan Doyle.

Good books, or just decent books were difficult to get, you could not buy the books you wanted in the bookstores, and you could not get the books you wanted in the library. Since my aunt worked in the publishing house, she had access to the “special” library, which is why I had a chance to read “The Lost World” and “Pippi Longstoking” (do not ask why the latter one was also “a deficit.” )

For a while, we only had one TV set in the apartment, which was placed in the “dining room” (actually, one of two rooms where my aunt and my great aunt lived). Sometime in the early 70s, my mam got a chance to purchase a TV just for us, so we could watch it in the evenings sitting on her sofa. She also got earphones (probably form work), and sometimes she watched something when I was already asleep, or at least was supposed to be asleep).

The radio (combined with the vynil disk player) was located by my mom’s bed, and one of our Sunday morning activities included listening to the “Good Morning!” show while still in bed. I know it is hardly possible to believe that there were times when I would get out of bed way past 9 AM!

A couple of pictures from 1973 that I could find!

Continue reading “Second And Third Grades” →