I remember we were in the 10th floor kitchen of HJ, and we had all seen Amanda’s sister Jackie.  And we all thought she was a beast because she was so tall and muscular.  We started joking about how she potentially had the ability to slap us anywhere we needed to go, and Jenny’s response was “Point me in the direction of Cosmic [Cantina].”

In 6th grade I started Middle School at Piedmont, which was called Piedmont Open Middle School back then. CMS was still in the process of converting from a Junior High system to a Middle School system. Halfway through the year, we got a lot of students who were transferring from elementary schools that still had 6th grade.

Jenny in the 7th Grade, she wasn't at our school in time to be in the 6th grade book

Jenny transferred in, and while she was never on my “team” (my half of the grade) during our time at Piedmont, we were in a few classes together. In sixth grade, we were in the same Math class: Ms. Johnston’s. Prior to Jenny’s arrival, I was bored with this class. Luckily, we had this pre-testing deal going, where if we could score an 84 or better before the unit was taught, we could work on an independent project and prepare ourselves for the unit’s final test (this was the “Open” part of Piedmont). So until Jenny I arrived in class each day hoping to leave immediately for the media center to continue toying with HyperStudio and learning HyperLogo, and eventually learning HTML and Adobe’s PageMaker all under the guise of “learning to present math projects.” Once Jenny arrived, I was curious to see how she answered the questions in class that previously I had been the only one answering. My first interest in Jenny was in her thoughts on our Maths.

I don’t think I was at all interested in her romantically at the time, in fact, I thought she looked like a rat! Not to be particularly demeaning, but many people look like animals to me at times, and the way her ears were, and her teeth, and her high pitched (kinda like Mickey Mouse) voice, I likened her to a rat (I think a rat rather than a mouse because of whatever feigned animosity I was obliged as a boy to have for girls).

Aside from being a refreshing addition to Math, she was an amazing student and I strove to compete with her in Spanish as well (I stood no chance).

Even though we both grew up on the same side of Charlotte, and I even attended some sort of Cotton-candy having fair at Merry Oaks which is where she went to school, we didn’t meet until half-way through the 6th grade, and meeting her in Ms. Johnston’s math class is my first memory of her.