Hope Your Robot Brings You an A

Anyone who knows me knows I love robots. I have a large blue robot that was given to me in college – a good friend made it for me in his lab (he was an aeronautical and astronomical PhD student) out of wood and hardware, and brought it by the library where I worked as surprise. The best feature he has is poseable eyebrows. Hilarious! I also have little sticky robots on my desk at work - they make for great lunchtime photo sessions behind a backdrop of copier paper (I work hard, I promise).

I'm not sure what robot my mom is referring to in this note - one of many she slipped in with my lunch throughout my childhood - but this was written to me in the first few days of 6th grade, so obviously my love is over a decade old.

With most of my elementary school classmates, we’d just “graduated” from 5^th grade and moved over to one of the school district’s middle schools. This was the first time we had more than one class in English; our elementary school had been an immersion school, but the middle school was a sort of hybrid system that incorporated multiple elementary schools, so half our day was in English with other kids (gym, art, math, English), the other half in Spanish with (social studies, science, Spanish). It was also pretty large in comparison, and I remember getting lost on more than one occasion, but did eventually figure it out, I guess. I mean, I’m not there now, so I think I did OK.

And I’m not sure why my mom thought Kelly would figure out what I was going to give her for her 12^th birthday. Was I really bad at keeping secrets then? Had I told our other best friends, Kelsey and Christy? I was probably worrying unnecessarily, which is still one of my favorite pastimes. Things I am unnecessarily worried about right now:

n Crocodiles (is there a chance they could come to the Pacific Northwest? Will I need to move? Crocodiles can track you.)

n Alligators (see Crocodiles, but without the tracking part. They don’t/can’t/aren’t willing to do that. I appreciate their laziness.)

n Falling off my bike (I am not currently on a bike, but I was this morning. I was worried then too, but it was more appropriate.)

I rotate worries/fears pretty often so it never gets boring, though Crocodiles are almost always on the list. Unless I’m at home and then the fear of burglary usually edges them out, because I haven’t heard of crocodiles in the PNW yet, so I don’t worry them being in my kitchen like that one woman in Florida who was nearly eaten.*

*Ok, she wasn't nearly eaten. But still. Could have been.

UPDATE: My mom says I was worried about Kelly finding out about the gift because I HAD told Kelsey and Christy and was concerned they'd tell. Huh, the things you find out when you share your blog with your mom.