Danny Merrell Shares a Few School Pictures and Stories

'Tis the season for first day of school pictures.  Every year at this time, social media blossoms with parents posting their children's photos to the network.  When I was attending grade school, back in the day, Polaroids were the pictures of choice.  But, we never used them to take 'first day of school' photos.  So, the best I can do here is share some of my old school pictures.

This picture above is from first grade at Lockhart Primary School.  My teacher was Mrs. Beaver.   Every one of her student's had a personal quote featured on her classroom wall.  Mine was, "When I came home, my dog licked me all over."  Not sure of the significance of that quote or why she felt compelled to feature it on the wall, but for some reason, it made me proud.  My favorite school activity was playing 'red rover' at recess.

Here I am, a year or two older now.  You can see part of my shirt and not my pants, but I can assure you I was wearing Toughskin jeans.  That's all I wore because my mom completely bought into their guarantee that chlidren would grow out of them before the pants wore out.  That wasn't entirely true.  The reinforced knees wore out on some of my jeans, but my Mom would just sew on knee patches instead of buying new jeans.  So, technically, it was still the same pair of jeans.

Well, at least my bangs are straighter in this photo.  It looks like I'm kind of looking into the sun.  Something about horizontal stripes and my mom.  That's all I ever wore when it came to shirts.  Maybe she thought I needed to look fatter, I don't know.  I'm guessing that the smile disappeared in the two previous photos due to baby teeth falling out, or maybe these photos were taken before the word 'Cheese' was said as you were posing.  Yes...I'm that old.

Oh, now, here we go!

Let's flash forward to my senior year.  5' 10", 195 pound offensive lineman for the Lockhart Lions.  I had been a running back in previous years, but my coach told me that I was faster at running back to the huddle, so I got switched to the line.

And would you look at all that hair!?  Wavy, thick hair that I would wash and just let it do its own thing.  Granted, it's still doing its own thing, if you call letting go a thing.

So...there are a few pics from my time in school, 50 years removed from when I first sat at a desk, still wishing I could pet my German Shepherd named Shep one more time...while he licked me all over.