Saving Childhood Photos

I thought I had lost this photo, but I recently unearthed it among some other precious and not so precious treasures.

This is my second grade class photo. In an earlier post, I expressed my infatuation with Mrs. Gagnet. (She's gorgeous!) I'm the only Filipino in the class, so I shouldn't be hard to find.

[Original]


[HP Auto Color Corrected]


I'm so glad I found this picture before the color deteriorated too far. I'm going to archive this in gray scale as well.

Odd, I can still remember a few of my classmates names. Eric is to Mrs. Gagnet's left. Wade is top left. The guy in the white shirt (center) is Skip. I think the girl up front, left is Julie. And the half-pint behind Skip is Scooter...maybe?

In other classrooms, the coat room was accessible from both sides of the room. Kids often used the passageways as places to run laps and play tag before and after class. Mrs. Gagnet was smart enough to close off one side with a fish net to control traffic and tame us wild children.

Sai Sword Wrapping Tutorial

Sorry for the jittery video. I had to compress it to meet YouTube's size limit.

Letter to my Second Grade Teacher

Dear Mrs. Gagnet,

When I was your student in 1975 at Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Pensacola, Fla. (back then states had three letter abbreviations), I had a crush on you. Even though more than 30 years has passed, and you've been long married, changed your last name, had kids and grand kids, perhaps gone a little gray, and maybe not even be with us on Earth any longer, my memory of you as a newly graduated out of college twenty-something is fresh in my mind.

You always had my attention, not just because of your beauty, but because you had important things to say. You were honest in telling us if an atomic bomb went off nearby that the "duck and cover" drill we had to pracice wouldn't do us any good. I felt comforted when you said you wouldn't leave us alone in the classroom, if the bomb went off.

In the playground, you stopped the bullies from picking on me. And at lunchtime, you made sure your seat at the teachers' table was close to my class table; to keep an eye on us.

Back then, you had to teach every subject and with hindsight, that couldn't have been very easy. I especially liked the way you sang during music time. You got us all started on a chorus and you'd sing the lead or picked a song we could all do together.

On rainy days, you'd come into class with a hat on your head. Being French, I wondered why you never wore a baree'. On hot days, you'd roll up your sleeves like you meant business, as if you were about to bake a cake or butcher meat. One time, the principal called you over the intercom to go to his office. All of us students were unsupervised for about five minutes. I figured out that this was some kind of psychology experiment, and we were being monitored from the hallway and over the intercom. You came back a little disappointed that we didn't go berserker and tear the classroom or each other apart. You thanked us anyway for being such good boys and girls.

Since then, I've done a lot of growing and learning. I'm still doing a lot of growing and learning. Through the martial arts, I've also become a teacher and I hope you'd be proud that you've helped shape a person who could've gone on to do selfish things, but instead chose to do something selfless.

I often have lots of time to myself, usually very late at night after work and after teaching. I work on my writing projects and on something called a "blog." When I get bored with writing, I grab my guitar and play for awhile. Still, I wonder what life would've been like if I had stayed in Pensacola like my father had originally planned for us. I had Mrs. Whatley for 3rd grade. Who knows? You could've been my teacher for 4th grade.

As for sweethearts, I had a few out hear in California. But, nothing long-lasting. These days, it's hard to compete with the records of yester-year. So many people are moving too fast to get to nowhere. They think they know what they want, but settle for something different over the next horizon. I miss the comfort of my careless childhood. Sesame Street was dependable. 15 cent chocolate milks at the barber's shop by the school was dependable. Heck, even the racism was dependable.

And...Mrs. Gagnet's turtleneck sweaters, short skirts, and go-go boots were dependable! Let's face it, people. My first grade teacher was plain sexy. She looked a lot like Jeannie C. Riley (she recorded "Harper Valley PTA" in 1968). She didn't dress like that every day. Man, but when she did...wowzers!

So Mrs. Gagnet (and her family) please accept my most sincerest apologies for not being a gentleman in this instance. I've waited thirty years to get that off my chest.

I feel better now.

-Ernie, Chief Lab Rat

Cold Weather Training

Since we’ve entered the winter season, I thought I’d share a little bit of my childhood in the snow...

When I was five and six years old, I lived in Iceland. My father was stationed there while he served in the U.S. Navy. During most of the year, the weather is quite mild. But in winter, it can get cold enough to throw boiling water from a pot out the front door and watch it freeze before it hits the ground.

I remember bundling up and my friends and I would go to the corner playground to build snowmen. One kid and I tried to ride the see-saw. He sat on the low end, and I climbed up on the high end. He suddenly stood up and I thought I was going to plop straight to the ground, as kids often cruelly play this joke on each other. But, it was so cold, ice had frozen the pivot point and I was suspended in mid-air. We laughed so hard our boogers shot out of our noses like icicles.

Now a Californian (SF Bay Area since 1975), I still prefer cooler weather. Even in winter, people often ask me “Aren’t you freezing?” because I normally wear shorts and a t-shirt. I just explain, “I’m used to it.”

Not so much, recently. In the past eight months, I’ve dropped about 23 pounds. I’ve always been a little on the porky side, even as a little kid. I really love bacon. And cheese. Oh, did I mention rice and potatoes, too? Well, smaller portions are the secret to my weight loss. But now I’m not so insulated. Perhaps, age and a smaller appetite have a lot to do with it, too.

I do an awful lot of outdoor training. I’ll hike in the woods and find an opening among the trees and practice kata for a couple of hours, then hike back. Sometimes the woods can be bitter cold. So can Northern California beaches where I also train.

Being able to withstand cold extremes is all a matter of diet and training. I believe conditioning yourself to endure cold requires regular exposure and having eaten enough calories to fuel a metabolic rate to keep your muscles active, since they are what generate body heat.

In Japan, group outdoor training in the snow is called fuyu-gasshuku.