When I was little I was taught to write loopy letters. We were graded on how flowing the loops were on our ells and kays, and how wide or narrow they were. Then I discovered the joys of italics, and pens with oblique nibs, and beautiful-smelling inks. So now my hand-writing is large and illegible, and nowadays no one needs to write by hand any more, so it doesn't matter.

I was always jealous of kids who had middle names. I didn't have one, and in school, people would have monogrammed things with 3 initials or they would talk about what their middle names were and I would feel so left out. So somewhere around 2nd grade, I think, I made "Jacqueline" into Jackie Lynne and signed all my school papers that way. I still at some points think of "JLB" as my initials.

When I was in first grade, one of my drawings was put on display in the school hallway, and one day when I came upstairs after lunch my teacher, Sister Mary Pierce, put her arm around me and told me that the second grade teacher, Sister Marshun, has asked her if she, Sister Mary Pierce, had done the printing under my drawings, because it was such good printing she couldn't believe I did it.