ABC, it's easy as 1, 2, 3...Or is it?

Remember when you were a kid, elementary school age, and you learn something really important in school that day? Like, addition and subtraction, times tables, long division, cursive, state capitols, presidents of the United States, The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the list goes on and on. You don't know it at the time, but you are obtaining knowledge that you will use and talk about for the rest of your life. I mean seriously, what American over the age of 11 and a half doesn't know about Pearl Harbor, or has never heard of The Great Depression. That crap is important and if it happens to come up in a conversation and you don't know about it, you look like a dumb dumb.

Well my blogging pals, I'm here to fess up. I'm not going to hide it anymore. I missed a critical day in elementary school…I missed Alphabetical Order day. I'm not proud, but I can't hold it in any longer. I didn't even know I missed such an imperative day in my elementary school career until End of Level Testing came around. Apparently my teacher didn't believe in reviewing before we took the tests. I guess she figured six-year-olds could retain all the information she'd given us over the past none months and regurgitate it in order to pass our EOL's. She must have had a lot of faith in us. But I'm here to tell you Mrs. What's-Her-Face, you were wrong, dead wrong!!

Now I'm going to paint a picture about how End of Level Testing went for me that fateful day. A day I've tried hard to forget but to no avail. So there I am six-year-old-ish Kate, a tiny, brown-haired, and probably recovering from a horrible bowl-cut hairdo, Ninja Turtle loving girl. Sitting quite contently, but probably with a serious, non-smile look on my face (after all, I am at school). After cruising through the first three quarters of the test (I was very impressive at that age), I come to the last two pages. Now I realize I was but a wee lady when this happened, but the next series of events I can remember clear as day. I proceeded to slowly read the instructions which went something like: "Put the following words in alphabetical order." I read it over again, trying to understand. Then I thought, what in the world is alphabetical order? I tried to think back to when we learned about such a thing but couldn't come up with anything. I knew the alphabet; I knew how to read; but this 'alphabetical' word was just too much for my little head to wrap itself around. I looked over all the words trying to be a problem solver but I just couldn't seem to figure it out. I was so frustrated and confused. Why hadn't my deadbeat teacher taught me about this nonsense? And why hadn't I ever heard this word before? Then it hit me, I must have missed the day we learned about alphabetical order. I know it sounds simple, like, how could I not figure it out by breaking down the word 'alphabetical' and coming up with alphabet, then maybe assuming the word starting with the letter B went before the word starting with W. Well, I guess I just wasn't smart enough to figure it out, or what I like to think, is that my brain was already fried from hours of testing, that my cognitive thinking was long gone and I was just trying to finish at that point. Throw six-year-old me a bone here!

After accepting the cold hard fact that I just wasn't going to get it, I proceeded to spell out words on my bubble sheet. 1. C 2. A 3. B and 4. B 5. A 6. D. I figured I might as well have fun if I'm going to blow it anyway. And maybe I would guess right on some of them…it could happen. After feeling sorry for myself because I ended on such a bad note, I put the test behind me, as I always do, and looked forward to playing Turtles or something. Let's just say when I got those test scores back, I didn't fare too well in that particular section; in fact, I think I missed every single one of the stupid 'alphabetical order' questions.

So there it is; the ugly truth. Don't you dare think I'm stupid, I know ya'll missed an important day, long division maybe? Or was it cursive? I will find out…eventually.