Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I know this is the second blog today but I just had a really great evening and wanted to share it. Also goes to show that life is made up of ups and downs, variety is the spice of life and all that. Anyway, one of the things I am most grateful to my parents for (I am grateful for a lot of things) is their peculiar habit of saving scraps of paper, letters, bits of work, drawings etc from throughout our childhood and filing them away in a huge metal cabinet. On Tuesday evening my sister and I dug out several of these files (for research purposes, I may or may not be writing...) and the results were hysterical.

All my school reports are in there, dating back from my very first primary school assessment. Weirdly, and for reasons I clearly cannot fathom, sentences such as “Emily sometimes talks too much” crop up rather frequently and throughout all my scholastic years. One of my favourite comments is actually on my year 7 report (I was 12 at the time) which says rather succinctly “Emily can sometimes try to take charge of a situation even when it is inappropriate for her to do so.” Slander, I am telling you.

In my middle school, there was a small box on the back where the pupil was encouraged to write a short self assessment of their academic progress so far. I appear not to have got the hang of that as aged 10 my progress report reads “I am kind (mostly!) and quite pretty”. Obviously no self esteem issues there then.

In all seriousness though going back through these files is a much treasured trip down memory lane, frequented with cries of “oh I had forgotten that” and “oh my goodness how old was I there!?” etc. I would strongly urge any parents out there to create these little folders (or memory boxes as I know some call them) as they are truly invaluable to go back through years later. This file also holds the answer as to how happy I was as a child, with the following sentence on yet another school report. “I am a friendly person and I have a happy life. I want to go on doing my best at everything.” Clearly my parents did something right then.

7 comments:

Jayne said...

LOL. Love the 'I am kind and quite pretty'. :0)

I love looking through my old school books. My reports tended to say that I talked to much in class. In fact, I got seperated from Christopher Wolfe when I was 10 because we spent all day giggling.

take care.

xx

Anonymous said...

Emily ,could someone be thinking of writing their life story like everyone keeps telling them to???Memories of your childhood are wonderful ,I still have my report card from nearly 40 yrs ago where I changed my results because I hadn't done very well and my mother never knew (I was sooo bad!)Get me on the waiting list for that book!! love Annex

Jac said...

Loving the school report comments. Emily tends to take charge of a situation? Who would have guessed ;-)

Higs
Jac xx

Anonymous said...

Hehe, it's so funny looking back through things from years ago, especially from school! Always quite amusing...!

Not sure if "for research purposes...I may or may not be writing" means you're thinking of/already started writing a book (as many people on here have suggested you do!) but I hope you are! You've had one hell of a journey so far, and it's nowhere near ending yet! :) xxx

Anonymous said...

Me again!
I don't know if you follow the LJ of a girl in Canada, Eva (http://65redroses.livejournal.com) but I do - she's just posted a video on her LJ (I couldn't get it to work on there but it can be seen here: http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6226652NpBFEHt?searchId=6405049964597446547&rank=0 ) - the first half is her performing a one-woman comedy about her experiences in hospital, and the other half is a speech about living with CF. It's all from a Canadian CF Gala last year. I thought you might be interested to see it! xxx

Anonymous said...

Emily sure your parents and family so proud of you. Looking back at such treasured memories of your younger days etc. Yes tehy ahve certainley done something right bringing you up into such a wonderful kind generous and thoughtful young lady.......

hugz Elaine & Rach xx

Fi said...

I love reading my old reports though most of them say I'm really quiet. So they're very dull!

Sorry to read about your friend in the last post. And thank you for your wise words about weeding :0) I knew I was being ungrateful, and you help me to see the light in the situation.

much love
xxx