The Early Years: Jim Can’t Draw Cards Either

From the “It’s The Thought That Counts” Department, this is a card I apparently made for my parents back in elementary school. Can you guess what holiday it’s for?

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The Early Years: Syruptitious

So this week, having no new “Not A Review” to do, and having only just recently done a “Teaser Tuesday” and a “Random Rejection”, I decided to return once more to the giant stack of elementary school papers that my folks sent me some years back. This one is another example of “Jim Can’t Draw”*, and also an example of “But At Least Jim Knows What To Put On Pancakes”.

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The Early Years: “The Tree”

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!

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)

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: Senses+

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: Jim Is Class Spokesman

From the “Blatant Lies” department:

 

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Coded message translation: “My captors forced me to write this. Send help.”

 

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The Early Years: Jim Is Small But Very Precise With Measurements

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Sadly, my drawing skills never really improved all since then. Also, is it just me, or did I draw myself looking a tiny bit like the Joker in that picture?

IAm5_Joker

Hmm, okay, maybe not.

The Early Years: Safe/Scary

It’s been a while since I reached into the giant stack of old schoolwork and other papers that my folks sent out to me a few years ago, so I thought it was time to do that again. And what did I fish out? This vaguely creepy little pseudo-Venn diagram:

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The Early Years: Happy/Sad

It’s been a while since I reached into the great big stack of elementary school documents and assignments that my folks shipped out to me a while back, so I thought that this week, instead of another teaser from Great North Road, I would go get something out of the pile of forty year old papers. And so I present to you this “Happy/Sad” assignment:

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