PrimarySchoolYears

 

I started Primary School in a class together with fifteen other children, who were all a bit older than I was, because my parents wanted me to attend the same class as my cousin. Not only I was the youngest in the class, but also the smallest, and, what the others said I was dreamy and naive. Since I had the same route to school as a few of my classmates, it was obviously clear that I would meet them at a certain corner, for going to school together. But I walked slower, I was 'dawdling', and I couldn't keep up with the pace of the others because of my shorter leg, who additionally enjoyed to run away and leave me behind.
Schulanfang

<== My cousin and me as 'Firstgraders'

As for the 'typical' tasks in school (learnig to read, write and calculate) I easiliy picked them up; Orthographie I was very good in, because if I had seen a word once, I always new how to spell and write it. Reading I learned quickly, and also quickly I became a 'bookworm'; I read everything, that had to do with horses (I taught myself a bit riding - completely fromm books - and later I could use it on real ponies for a short while). Moreover I liked books on natural sciences.
Calculating held no dufficulties for me; I remember a day I was faster calcuulating than my maths teacher.
The only difficulty so far was my handwriting, which was a horribility, and which always was a source of bad marks in elementary school. My handwriting is still bad; never really changed. I often tried to write 'nicely', but the best I could do was to write decipherable.
Lessons about general things such as how coalmining or anthills work, or different flowers, what our town looked like centuries ago (it was a castle), the functioning of simple curcuits, mainly that was very interesting.
Terrible I found needlework: I was not only not good at it, I was also very slow - even with getting my things out of my bag, and back into it for break. One time my needleworkteacher brought a stopwatch, just to show me HOW slow I was..
PE was 'interesting'. Ball Games were the most terrible things in PE, although I finally was the one who could get out of the way of the ball quickliest (because I was the most afraid of it), catching and throwing I was a loser in, and I tried to avoid it all the time. Gymnastics I liked more, I could climb up the ropes up to the ceiling of the gym, but then, it wasn't a teamsport. Swimming I did not learn, though I had two years of swimming lessons at elementary school (I was too thin and light, they said, I would just slip through the water and couldn't stay just near the surface).
During elementary school I did not learn to hate school; i had my cousin, she instinctively watched a little after me and cared about me not always being alone, the class was not very big, not so many pupils there, and I was not so aware of the teasing of the boys and girls there, and they were not really evil in most cases. Besides, I was good enough there to start at grammar school.