During the summer before my fifth grade year, we moved again. Mom and dad bought a house in Stonegate. Part of the neighborhood was in Virginia and part of it was in Tennessee. We were on the Tennessee side so we had to change schools once again. This time we went to Holston View Elementary, home of the Mounties, and back then I didn’t have a clue what a Mountie was. I think they’ve changed their mascot since then.
Holston View was different than any school I had been to. They had pods. Each pod had two grades in it and the classes were separated by partitions. I don’t know how we got anything done with all that open space and noise. We had carpet too. We would all sit on the floor sometimes while the teacher tried to teach us. For some reason each class had a mixture of 5th and 6th graders. My 5th grade teacher was Ms. Shaw and my 6th grade teacher was Ms. Shankel who later became Mrs. Arnold. My boys also went to Holston View and Ms. Arnold was their teacher too.
Once again I was the new kid. One kid told me I was in the wrong Pod; that I should go with the other Kindergarteners. Most kids don’t want to stand out; they just want to be like everyone else and I was no exception. I’m sure I said unkind things too and never thought anything of it. Children are overly honest and unfortunately not very tactful. Thankfully most of us grow up.
One of my first friends in the fifth grade was Jackie W. She was from up north (New York, maybe?) and she had a pretty pronounced accent. She wore glasses, which probably made her self-conscious too. I had my first boyfriend in the fifth grade. His name was Greg A. I don’t remember ever actually talking to him. He asked me to be his girlfriend via Jackie. At first I said no and then changed my mind because I did want to be his girlfriend. Poor Jackie had to go back and forth until we made up our minds. We would play on the playground on this huge climbing apparatus that would be labeled too dangerous today. Greg and I would chase each other around outside but that was about it.
Spike T was a little sweet on me and sent me flowers on my birthday that year. Mama was very impressed. He was a mess and he always called me Foxy Coxy, even through high school. I would act like I was embarrassed but secretly I liked it. I had a couple of other boyfriends, Steve and Blake but I don’t remember any other boyfriends until I was 16.
One of my favorite things to do was go to Skate Fun. Sometimes when I hear a 70’s song it brings me back to skating, especially Jungle Love which I thought was Chug-A-Lug. I was an adult (and not a young adult) before I finally realized that I had been singing it wrong for years. Chug-a-lug, it’s driving me mad; it’s making me crazy, crazy! Hahahaha! It’s funny how you can sing a song for years and not even pay attention to what the lyrics were. Later, you think, what?
In the sixth grade, it was surprising but I was voted Miss Mountie. As you can see by the pictures below I had pretty big teeth and it took a while for me to ‘grow’ into them. I didn’t have any special talents. I wasn’t the most athletic, most studious or most anything. I had a part in one of the school plays (Bicentennial Skit) and my only line was “The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!” I was riding backwards on the back of a ‘horse’ which was actually two people underneath a costume. I remember everyone laughing. They only picked me for the part because I was the smallest and wouldn’t break anyone’s back.
My special friends were Debbie D, Lisa T, Karla H, Teresa A, Angela B and Beth P. Karla had this huge Barbie Dream house which I thought was the coolest ever. We thought we were too big to play with Barbies but we did anyway. At home I would make my own house. The beds would be a book with a wash cloth for the bedspread and another rolled up for the pillows. So, you can imagine how excited I was when I went to Karla’s house.
My English teacher, Ms. Peters, gave Beth and me detention once. We deserved it because we had been talking and wouldn’t shut up; even after she told us a few times to be quiet. She finally got fed up and yelled, “Beth, Karen, and DH!” Well, I just about died of fright and cried my eyes out. Bless her heart, Ms. Peters felt so bad that she told me I didn’t have to stay after for detention hall, which I really did deserve.
It was our house in Stonegate that we finally got cable. Every day I would come home from school and see the cable truck (because everyone was getting cable) and wonder if we were next. Mom had vowed she would never pay for television but she finally relented. Daddy loved his television and music so we always had a good television set and stereo. My brother and I also got Atari and we played Pong all the time. We would move those paddles up and down the television screen, bouncing the little white ball, back and forth, back and forth. It sounds pretty boring but we thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Karen G. Bruce 
Wow! That was quite a trip down memory lane! You were a lot more special than you remember!
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