thirty days of thirty years: six

Year six: 1987-1988. Age five, as I recall, was a good year.

Sometime during this year is when I started playing soccer. My brother played soccer and every time we would go to his games I would beg my dad to let me play. There weren't any teams for girls at this time, though, so I just started playing on a boys team. I would continue to play soccer for nine more years and I still love the sport.

For a few years I had been going to this little, Montessori school called Little People's Learning Center and I graduated from Kindergarten in the Spring of 1988. We performed a little play of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the ceremony and I was the dwarf, Bashful. This was an obvious choice for me because I was ridiculously shy at this age. I had one line and it was this: "I'm Bashful." Talk about type-casting.

I was actually supposed to go back for a second year of kindergarten, but then when Fall rolled around my teachers recommended that I should be moved up into first grade. So I got tested and moved up into elementary school early, and I remember being really excited and proud about that. I thrived on doing good and pleasing adults and I felt like this was a big accomplishment.