Flashback Friday - School Edition: Extra Curricular Activities

It's Flashback Friday time! I'm so happy to be back to this meme. So here we go...

What type of extra-curricular school activities did you participate in during your school days? Clubs? Spelling bees or other contests? Cheerleader or drill team? Sports? Journalism? Choir or theater? Were there any memorable events related to those? Did you receive any awards? Were football games a big deal at your school? Did you usually attend - and was it with a group or as a date? What was Homecoming like?

Let me say, while I do have some good memories and had a few great teachers, I think I had a disproportionate share of BAD ones,. Thankfully that didn't extend (much) to extra-curricular activities.

During junior high (which was 7-9 grade in our district) I was horse crazy and joined the S.E.N.S.E. Club (Seventh, Eighth, Ninth Student Enjoyment Club) because during the fall months they would bus the club members out to a riding farm just about every Saturday. I lived in the suburbs of Detroit at the time so it was a good hour drive to get there. I was a very shy young teen and none of my close friends shared my equine passion so I didn't enjoy the trips back and forth; talking to anyone I didn't know well -- be it boys or girls -- was agony for me back then so I typically sat by myself up near the front of the bus, my nose stuck in a book. Not only did I love to read, but I found that if you appeared to be reading, nobody bothered you.

Horse-back riding was a blast, even if it did clean out my allowance every week. I do, however, remember being bitten by a horse once -- right on my behind! OUCH! And another time I was chewing gum and during a brief gallop when my horse attempted to catch up with another horse, the gum flew out of my mouth and got stuck in my hair :(  Some "helpful" person decided the best thing to do was cut it out, but they took a huge chunk of hair and not just where the gum was stuck. Aaaargh! I got a shag cut to mask the missing chunk, but it wasn't too long before I just had my hair cut super short -- and it's been that way most of the time ever since.

We moved to Kentucky just as I was getting ready to start ninth grade. Instead of being "top of the heap" like Linda mentioned, I was a lowly freshman at the high school. Major letdown! Even though I'd been born in Kentucky, my family had lived "up north" since I was four so my classmates counted me a Yankee. I was still pretty shy and it was very hard to make friends, being considered by most as an "outsider". There were no clubs or anything, no music, art or theatre programs, nothing except sports.

Not good at sports and definitely not popular enough to be a cheerleader. 'Nuf said.

Being from the south, you know Football is King! Although we did have basketball too. Anyway, what I remember about Homecoming is that our senior year the "king" had just had to get married and even though his wife was only a junior, and the title of queen had ALWAYS gone to a senior prior to that, the teachers and administrators decided it would just be too uncouth to have a married man be paired with anyone other than his wife, so a junior was crowned "queen".

My last two years I did get involved in the high school newspaper as well as the FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America). My first year in FBLA I was the club reporter. My senior year I was president for the local club and reporter for our southeastern Kentucky district. One of the highlights was going to the national convention in Alabama!

My one and only award was for wielding a calculator faster than anybody else. LOL  Seriously! I had completely forgotten about it, but my mom saved the award in a scrapbook and I ran across it just a few years ago as we were packing to move overseas. FBLA sponsored competitions in different areas: shorthand, typing, etc. and I apparently could tabulate columns of numbers faster than anyone else. Aren't you impressed?! :)

Even though high school was a rather painful experience for me, it has been fun to remember some of the happier times. Thanks Linda for another great Flashback Friday topic!