
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 8, 1995                   TAG: 9501070037
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: G-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MELISSA DEVAUGHN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THEY'LL BE FINE; JUST GIVE THEM TIME TO GROW UP

I'VE SPENT THE PAST SIX MONTHS trying to learn again what it's like to be a fifth-grader. It's been easy - we were all 10 once, young enough to act like children when we wanted, old enough to act like adults when told.

At Elliston-Lafayette Elementary School, I met many young girls who took me back to the fifth grade.

There is Danielle Dow, one of the shortest girls in the class. I laughed as she showed all her friends at the cafeteria table her gold-filled tooth that was about to fall out.

Then there's Tonya Akers, with her slim frame, straight brown hair and mostly boys' clothing. Tonya likes baggy pants, flannel shirts and high-top tennis shoes.

I liked green Toughskins jeans, plaid shirts and Chuck Taylor court shoes.

I was a skinny, stringy-haired fifth-grader in 1978. I went to a then-semirural school in Botetourt County called Colonial Elementary.

I liked boys, but only the ones who could run fast (but not faster than me).

My best friend was Angie Blevins. We were tomboys, choosing tackle football or kickball with the boys over hopscotch or jump rope with the girls.

I refused to wear a dress.

I always felt different in elementary school because my mother was a teacher there - she still is today - and I always feared that my teachers would pass reports of my behavior on to her.

However, I could hardly resist being "mischievous," and although my teachers rarely told on me, Mom didn't need a report to know how I behaved.

I remember the spanking - not allowed nowadays - I received from Mrs. Rathbone because I put a tack, pointy side up, in Marshall Martin's seat.

Then there was the time I met my "boyfriend" Darin Conner for a secret kiss behind some cars in the parking lot near the playground. Afterwards, we ran off in opposite directions and didn't tell anybody.

I spent my afternoons running around the woods behind my house, with my next-door-neighbor Anne Bowles. We broke just about every rule children can. We built raging campfires with matches snatched from home, we climbed to the top of our favorite pine tree and hung upside down by our knees from the top branch and we went down to the "cliffs" - actually a small but steep hill covered in rocks and dirt - and slid down on our bottoms.

But we were good kids at heart.

I passed notes all the time, and was constantly being reprimanded for talking in class. For almost the entire school year, my report card showed "X's" in "practicing self-control," "following school regulations" and "controlling talking."

"Fifth grade seemed to be kind of a calm grade for you as far as I remember," Mom told me recently. "Now, in second grade you were in that Christmas play that we had to pay you to be in, and in third grade you couldn't learn to divide, but fifth grade seemed OK."

My editor, who thinks I'm quiet and well-behaved, said in amazement, "You should write about that because it would give so many parents hope for the future!"

So, I look at Danielle, Tonya, Raven, Courtney, and all the other fifth grade girls at Elliston-Lafayette Elmentary and smile.

They'll be just fine.

by CNB