Hit the dirt!

I remember quite a lot about 5th grade, too. Mr. Voss was my teacher, my first male teacher. I thought he was wonderful. We made a rock collection for 5th grade, where we glued rocks on squares drawn on white cardboard and labelled them with the kind of rock they were. I thought that was so interesting. I was sure I had found jade and felt so proud of myself. And I thought obsidian was a great word and a pretty rock, too.

When we lived in Alaska, I loved playing with my friends in the sand dunes. I wonder how big they really were. In my memory they seemed enormous. We’d run up and down the dunes and whenever a plane flew over we’d yell, “Hit the dirt!” and pretend we had to hide because they were Russian planes, trying to take back Alaska because they were sorry they’d sold it now that there was gold there.