Hi Mini-Lori,
High Expectations
This is a pivotal year for you. Miss Murphy is your teacher. She was also your brother’s 2nd grade teacher. She has high expectations of you because Mark was an excellent student. Unlike Mark, you hate reading. Miss Murphy has your class structured in daily reading sessions for 15 to 30 minutes. Rather than read, you’d rather hold your book up to hide your face from her at her desk, while you look out the window or look at your friends. She’s so concerned about your reading progress that during the parent-teacher conference, Miss Murphy tells your mother that you might need to be in a special education class. Mother knows that’s not the problem. In fact, your mother is annoyed at you because she knows that you’re not applying yourself. Your reading compression is poor because you hate reading.
A Clean, Meticulous Kid
2nd grade is the year that you realize that you don’t like messy environments. The inside of your desk is clean and organized. You pencils are neatly stored in one section of your desk, while your paperwork is stacked for quick access. Your Barbie doll collection and accessories are neatly organized in empty Key Bank check boxes given to you by your mother, storing your Ken and Barbie shoes and accessories. Your school box is organized as your pencil, eraser, and other school supplies are perfectly placed in the box. In fact, all your toys are neatly organized and stored. You’ll learn quickly that neatness means everything has its place and is more efficient.
Favorite Stuffed Animal + Bike + Rope + Elastic Belt = Hours of Play
This is also the time when you learn to be as resourceful as MacGyver. You don’t know who MacGyver is, but you will. Your fondest memory of being MacGyver was when you discovered how to take your Winnie the Pooh stuff animal with you on your bike. All you needed was your baby doll stroller, an elastic band belt, and rope. You place Winnie the Pooh in the fold-able baby stroller. You secure Pooh in the stroller with your elastic belt.
You use five feet of rope to tie the stroller to the seat of your bike. Once you determine the knots are safe, you ride your bike up and down the street, towing Winnie the Pooh as your mother and father laugh and cheer with pride. In future, you’ll be able to disarm a nuclear missile with a paperclip just like MacGyver.
Even at this early age, you’re demonstrating a love of building things. You constantly play with Mark’s Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys. But your passion is Legos. Your Lego buildings are always symmetrical, pleasing to the eye. Using color conservatively, you use most choose a monochromatic approach to the Lego design of your buildings. While you don’t know it yet, this will be a constant theme in your life since bold color schemes aren’t pleasing to you. However, you will always use monochromatic themes in personal style and building websites.
This is also the year when you start being pulled out of class to go to the Indian Health Service dentist with the other Alaska native children. You’re taken from class, put into a taxi, and then taken to the Federal Building to see the dentist. Quickly, you realize that the other non-native children don’t have to do this. You start becoming embarrassed that must go with the other native kids. You seen the prejudice other native kids go through. Gerbil, you’re learning to be ashamed of being native because you’re also half-Japanese and don’t want to be seen as native.
Pop Culture of 1970-1971
While being half Alaska Native is becoming challenging, at least music is emerging as a key passion in your life. Music is a major part of your family’s life. Your mother and father love Tony Bennett, Neil Diamond, and other sounds of the 60s and 70s. Your brother is listening to “American Pie” by Don McLean and everything by Three Dog Night. You love the Partridge Family on TV, so your mother buys you the Partridge Family albums. In the second grade, your favorite songs are “I Think I Love You” and “I Can Feel Your Heart Beat.”
Action Items
- Don’t be nosy. Break the habit of always being curious about what others are doing. It’s a bad habit that could lead to being gossipy. In the work environment, you’ll learn that speculating about coworkers and executives is a career limiting habit. Don’t be nosy. Don’t gossip.
- Be MacGyver. By learning how to resourceful, you’ll use this key success factor over and over again. While it will take you awhile to learn, “There is no spoon.” You will learn that “All you need is a paperclip.”
- Play Mark’s chemistry set and microscope. You’ve mastered “building things” with Legos; however, you should ask Mark to let you watch him play with his chemistry set and microscope. Mark loves the sciences, so perhaps you can learn more about science, so you’ll develop an interest in the future.
- Be clean and organized. Being messy takes time; it’s inefficient and frustrating. Have tolerance and compassion for those people who struggle daily with their own messiness. They can’t help it if they aren’t as organized and clean as you are. Don’t judge. They may aspire to be clean and organized. They just can’t pull it off like you can.
- Learn focus and discipline in school. Read when you’re supposed to read. You might like reading if you give it a try. You’re reading comprehension will go up. You’ll learn to love books, more than cartoons on TV. Your mother knows you have potential. She’s just unaware that reading to her children will help children become better readers. This finding hasn’t been discovered yet. She never read to Mark. He discovered it on his own and is a natural bookworm.
- Do not be ashamed of your race or your heritage. You’ll form some internalized racism because of how Alaska Natives children are treated by Caucasian kids and adults during grade school, junior high, and high school. Take pride in being Native like you are in being part Japanese. Your parents will raise you as an “American” rather an Alaska Native or Japanese American. In college, you’ll have to take Anthropology classes to understand your diverse cultures. Regardless of internalized racism, you always find the time to talk to other Natives kids and feel awful when others are harassing them on the school yard. To this day, you wonder whatever happened to Maggie James. You hope she’s okay, but worry that she probably isn’t because her childhood was so bad.
