My Good, Bad Day

Hello future readers,

I guess the title of this entry doesn't make much sense to you, does it? Well, let me clue you in.

Actually my day started off good. I was sitting out on my front steps, playing with my paddle ball.

Then Kim and Sunny rode up on their bikes and asked if I wanted to go riding.

I really wasn't doing anything else, so I said "Sure" and got my bike out of the garage. We were having fun, riding along but not really going anywhere. Just riding around, enjoying the day.

Then I got a little ahead of Sunny and Kim. I could hear them behind me calling "Wait up, Julie".

When all of a sudden, my bike hit a bump on the sidewalk. My bike stopped, but I kept going...right over the handlebars!

I felt my foot catch in one of the handlebars, and it pulled my bike down on top of my foot!

Kim and Sunny jumped off their bikes and ran over to see if I was OK.

"Are you alright, Julie?", Kim asked. I just groaned. Kim pulled the bike off of me and Sunny helped me sit up.

"Can you get up, Julie?", Sunny wanted to know.

"I don't think so", I answered. My head and my arm really hurt. I felt like crying, but I didn't want my friends to think I was a baby. So I took a deep breath and said, "Could one of you go get my mom?"
So Kim jumped on her bike and rode back to my house to tell my mom what happened.

"Don't worry, Julie", Sunny said. "Your mom will be here soon." It couldn't have been soon enough for me. I felt like someone had used my head and arm to scrub the sidewalk!

A little while later, my mom showed up. She picked me up, put me in the front seat of our car, and put my bike in the trunk. When we got home, she carried me up to my room and put me on my bed.

Now that the girls weren't watching, I started to cry. My mom wouldn't think I was a baby, she would just talk softly and tell me everything would be alright.

My mom said I should hold JuJu while she cleaned my scrapes and put Bactine and Band-Aids on them. I like Bactine. It doesn't sting like the red stuff does.

My mom gave me a kiss, and went back downstairs. A few minutes later there was a knock on my bedroom door.
"Julie, it's us....Kim and Sunny. Can we come in?"
"Sure, come on in."

As they sat down, Sunny asked, "How do you feel?"
"Like the sidewalk jumped up and slapped me in the face, but I'll be OK."

"Man, you really had us worried!", Kim said to me.
"Yeah, it was really scary seeing you on the ground like that", Sunny added.
"Well, I just hope I don't ever fall of my bike again!"
Just them my mom came back into the room.
"Julie, you have mail from West Virginia."
"It must be from Vivienne!"

"It must be really far out to have a pen pal", Kim said as I opened the envelope.

After reading the letter a couple of minutes, I shouted, "Dynamite!"

"Well, don't keep us in suspense, what does it say?", Sunny wanted to know.

"It says that Vivienne's invited me to spend a week with her and go to day camp in West Virginia."

"Wow, that's really outta site, Julie!", Kim said.
"Yeah Julie, that's really groovy!", Sunny agreed.

"I just hope Mrs. Galbraith isn't our counselor! Remember how I told you guys how strict she was when I went to school with Vivienne?"
"Yeah, that would be a bummer."
"And how!"

So that was my bad, good day, future readers. It started out good, turned bad, but ended up good again. I don't think I'll have any trouble talking my mom into letting me go to West Virginia this time! Do kids still go to day camp in the future? I went once a really long time ago, and I can't remember what it was like. But if Vivienne, Betta and my other WV friends are there, it's sure to be a groove!

Until next time, future readers,
Your friend,
Julie Newman

Yay! Classroom Switch Day!

Hello future readers!

Well, Miss LaSalle and Mrs. Johnson finally let us have Classroom Switch Day! That means that last Friday, all day long,  Miss LaSalle's class all spent the day in Mrs. Johnson's. room. Far out! Mrs. Johnson's class is a little smaller than ours, and her class pet is a turtle named Toby. Since she used to be our music teacher, she keeps a big collection of records and a record player in her classroom. She gives out commendation cards too, and has class helpers, just like Miss La Salle, Both teachers agreed to just have this be a fun day for both classes as a reward for all our hard work this year.

 We got to play Hangman.

Nobody got it. The word was "phonograph".

Then Mrs. Johnson wrote a big word on the board, and we had to see how many smaller words we could make using the letters of the big word.

We did better with that game.

We played a few more games and then had silent reading time. After lunch and recess, we did the only real classwork we had done all day. We each had to write a composition about why Classroom Switch was a good idea.  She'd give them to Miss LaSalle after school to grade over the weekend.

At the end of the day, Mrs. Johnson said that we were well behaved and that she had a good time along with all of us.

And then she gave us all candy bars before we got dismissed! Dynamite! What a groovy way to start the weekend!

It was a really super day, and Mrs. Johnson is really nice. I wonder if kids in the future get to do fun stuff like switching classrooms for a day? It's cool to see how other teachers do things and set up their classrooms. I sure hope we get to do this again next year.

Until next time future readers,
Your friend,
Julie Newman

It's Final Project Time---with a boy??

Hello future readers,

I never thought it would happen. Usually, we get to pick our partners for end of the year final project. Well this year, Miss LaSalle decided to pick for us. I got...Kyle. It's not that I don't like Kyle. He's pretty nice, as far as boys go, but after what happened when I went over to Danny's house that time, I wasn't sure working with a boy was gonna be such a good idea. Kyle and I rapped about it in the lunchroom and decided we'd do our project about bears, and I'd go over to his house on Saturday (after the cartoons were over), so we could work on our project.

I could tell Kyle was really into superheroes. They were on his walls, his bed, even on his lamp. And he was reading a Spider-man comic book when I came into his room. I sat down on his Batman bean bag (oh brother!), and pulled out a book on Bears I had gotten at the library.

So we started talking about who was gonna do what. I said that I could do the writing since I had neat penmanship, and he said "Why don't I just type it?" Type it? Hmmmm....

Kyle told me he'd been practicing typing on his mom's beat up portable typewriter for the past year, and he got his own typewriter last Christmas. Far out! Now the written part of our project would really look like a grown-up did it! So I read out loud from the book, and Kyle typed it out in our own words.

And you know, he's pretty good with that thing!

Wow! Just like  grown-up! Then Kyle pulled out a large oak tag board and some crayons,  and thought we could make a neat poster to go with the report. Outta site! We looked in the book for a good picture to draw and got to work.

I'm not that great at drawing, even though I really like to do it. I draw OK for a kid, but I'm not an artist. But Kyle can draw really good, (OK really well!), so I did stuff like the trees, the grass and the sky, and Kyle drew the bear. Working with Kyle was turning out to be pretty neat! When we were done he held it up and asked me if I liked it. No, I didn't like it---I LOVED it! It turned out super!

Now we had a groovy poster and a neatly typed report to turn in. I was sure we'd get 100% for our grade!

Kyle asked me if I wanted to see his pet lizard, Lobo.

 I wasn't sure about that. When our cabin caught a lizard for our scavenger hunt at camp, Kim was the brave one who picked it up. But I didn't wanna hurt Kyle's feelings, so I said OK.

It wasn't so bad, except that he moves pretty quick and I almost dropped him.  So Kyle put him back in his tank, and said it was pretty cool that I didn't say lizards were icky. (Even though I sorta think they are!)

Kyle wanted to know if I wanted to play action guys.

Then I remembered I still had my Wonder Woman doll in my book bag from when I took it to Susan's house after school a couple of days ago.

Kyle said we could play Super Friends. He pulled out his tape recorder and tape box, and told me that sometimes he likes to record the Super Friends cartoon on Saturday morning, and act it out when he plays action guys with Danny and Jason.

I watch Super Friends on Saturday mornings, and I knew there wasn't too much fighting in them, so I agreed to play.

Would you believe I actually had fun! And I felt kinda dopey for not wanting to be teamed up with Kyle to do our final project. And just because Kyle digs superheroes, doesn't mean he acts like he's tough, and he's better than girls. (well, at least he didn't this time!) I know it's probably different when he's playing with Danny and Jason,though.  But I guess it's just like when I first met Danny...I shouldn't think all boys are gonna be rough and act crazy all the time. I guess sometimes they can even be kinda cool.

Until next time, future readers,
Your friend
Julie Newman