Category: the early years

The Early Years: “The Tree”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

So this week I thought I would find something in the pile of my elementary school stuff that my folks have shipped out over the years, and I came up with a something which, at first glance, I thought might contain some kind of spooky story about ghosts or woodland spirits, but after actually flipping through it, I would have to call it a (very) early precursor to one of the ridiculous adventures that one might see over at the animals’ blog. That something is my five-page illustrated epic novella, “The Tree”.

It may look like an inexpertly excised stomach, but it isn’t.
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The Early Years: Party Time! Excellent!

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

So last week I posted a scan of an old mimeograph of the rules for first grade; these rules indicated that there would be in-school parties for Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s Day, and I mentioned that I remembered the Halloween parties and the distribution of Valentine’s Day cards from everyone to everyone, but that I didn’t really remember the Christmas parties. Because my folks read the blog—they were, of course, the source of the giant pile of elementary school era documents from which I pull my posts for “The Early Years”—my father sent along a few pictures of some of those long-ago festivities. I don’t know if these are specifically from first grade or not (I’m no good at figuring out how old kids [including my past self] are just by looking at them), but they’re definitely from elementary school, I can tell that much …

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The Early Years: Old School (Rules)

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

It’s been quite a while since I went poking around in the stack of paperwork and whatnot from my elementary school days (a document trove even larger than my pile of rejection letters), so I thought that this week I would go fishing in there and see what I came up with. And lo! I found an ancient mimeograph of the ancient Rules for First Grade from many years ago. It’s not quite as old as the Code of Hammurabi, but on the other hand, it’s not as well preserved. Let’s have a look!

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The Early Years: Everyone Loves Monkeys. Apparently.

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

So this week I peeled a few layers off the top of the giant cache of my old elementary school work that my folks discovered and sent out to me a few years ago, in which I found this early, analog example of collecting “Likes”:

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The Early Years: Senses+

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

So this being a holiday weekend (although this post should appear the week after Memorial Day, assuming I don’t screw up the scheduling, it was actually prepared the week before), I was feeling kind of lazy, and decided to dip back into the giant cache of my elementary school papers that my folks excavated from the house where I grew up. This week, I grabbed a mimeograph of an old assignment about the senses:

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The Early Years: Those Are Awfully Big Words

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

Being a little short on time this week, and not having watched anything with Jason Momoa in it since Justice League, I decided to revisit that giant stack of old elementary school papers that my folks sent to me a while back. Seriously, it’s an even bigger pile of papers than my rejection file. Check it out:

Rejection letter file on the left vs. elementary school paper pile on the right (size 10 sneakers included for scale)
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The Early Years: Mother Said, “Where Are Your Pants?”

~ James Viscosi ~ 6 Comments

So this week I was taking something out of the closet in the office when I accidentally knocked over a pile of “The Early Years” materials, reminding me that I hadn’t done one of those posts in a while. And since the stack had conveniently shuffled itself by falling on the floor, this seemed like as good a time as any to pull something out of it; and so I present, “Scrambled Eggs”.

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The Early Years: Jim Was In A Play Once

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

Many, many years ago, I came across a casting advertisement for a play that was going to be put on at the outdoor stage in Hanna Park, a local park created by (I think) and named after (definitely) Ed Hanna, a colorful and notorious* former mayor of Utica, NY. The play was The Children’s Crusade, which, as you might imagine, was billed as some sort of heavy drama about—you guessed it!—the Children’s Crusade. According to the linked Wikipedia article, “The traditional narrative is likely conflated from some factual and mythical events which include the visions by a French boy and a German boy, an intention to peacefully convert Muslims in the Holy Land to Christianity, bands of children marching to Italy, and children being sold into slavery. Many children were tricked by merchants and sailed over to what they thought were the holy lands but, in reality, were slave markets.” Sounds cheerful, doesn’t it?

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The Early Years: We’ll All Float On

~ James Viscosi ~ 7 Comments

So there are some kids who you can just tell are going to grow up to become artists, because even when they’re little, they’re creating ridiculous good drawings and sketches. For instance, years ago, one of my wife’s 10-year-old students, upon learning that his teacher’s wife was a fellow Doctor Who fan, whipped up this little sketch of a Silent, a member of a group of alien religious fanatics who are one of the Eleventh Doctor’s main antagonists, whose primary ability is that nobody remembers a Silent after leaving his presence, but will still be compelled to act upon whatever instructions the Silent gave them:

You’ll forget you ever saw this as soon as you look away from it, but you’ll go and buy some of Jim’s books.
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