Oh Come With Me To Primary

Oh Come With Me to Primary

Sunday a member of the stake primary presidency spoke in our ward.  She asked what we remembered about our primary days, and that got me to thinking so here are a few "primary memories."

• Going to Primary on Wednesday afternoons after school.  (My primary years were all "pre-3-hour-block" ones.)
• Wearing a dress to school on Wednesdays so I could go in the chapel for opening exercises.
• Riding the bus to Primary and having the bus come back after Primary to pick kids up and deliver them to their homes.  (I never rode the bus home after Primary cause my house was closer to the church than was my bus stop, but it was still pretty cool service "back in the day" when the principal was also the stake pres. and no one was quite so "uptight" about this type of thing.)
• Riding an incredibly crowded bus home on Tuesday afternoons after the wards split and the second ward had Tuesday Primary and all rode my same bus to the church.
• Avoiding Sister Pricilla Rice with her cute little hats because she assigned talks and prayers.  (She must have been the secretary.)
• Thinking it would be so cool to work in the church library because it had that "split door" where the top half could open while the bottom half was shut.  (The library was in the little room next to the phone by the stage for anybody that remembers the old Logandale church before it burned.)
• Playing "colored eggs" on the big front lawn of the church before the first addition which extended the chapel almost to the road.  We would all squish in the architectural indentation on the front of the church while the child who was "it" called out colors.  If your color was called, you ran out and around on the big lawn and tried not to get tagged by "it."
• Corinne wearing a bandana every Primary day.  (She told me later that it was because Wednesday night was her "hair-washing" night and her hair was getting greasy by Tuesday-Sorry for the "blog-beating" Corinne, but hey it WAS the 70's and we wore bandanas a lot-I would have never known about the "hair issue" if you hadn't shared that little gem.)  Once Michael Cameron stole Corinne's bandana and tried to put it on the flag pole.
• Baptism interview in the upstairs bishop's office with Uncle Glen
• Baptism in the brand new font in the R.S. room addition.  (Previously the font was in the basement primary room.)
• Little Purple Pansies, In the Leafy Treetops, and Obedience.  (Some of my favorite Primary songs.  What happened to "Obedience?"  It's not in the new Children's Songbook.

"There is something that even a child can do. For greater than deeds of war,
obey God's word; obey God's word; for He will ask no more."

A short little song, but I love it's message-maybe it was deleted because of the reference to "war"-I don't know.)

• Speaking of Primary songs-the old orange Primary songbook:  Sing With Me
• Sister Beth Waite being my teacher.  (She's STILL in my ward-how cool is that?!, and I visit taught her for a few years.  She is one of my all-time favorite people.)
• Having Aunt Elaine as my teacher.  She had such cool visual aids.  
• My mom being the Primary President for EIGHT years.  (Some were after I was no longer in Primary-but hey-it's still a "primary memory".)
• Marathon Primary presidency meetings around our dining room table where the first agenda item was ALWAYS "evaluate."  My mom was ALWAYS trying to improve Primary from how the chairs were arranged to the primary program to the quarterly activities.
• Mom's "dates" with Brother Ozaki and Brother Dalley (bishopric members over Primary.)  They would "go out" together to issue Primary callings (Yeah, that would never happen now.)
• Playing the piano for Primary (NOT my favorite calling-but it was probably good for me.)
• Attending Primary "inservice" meetings.  (I got to go because of my piano-playing calling.) There were always awesome treats, and Renae Terry gave some amazing lessons-I was even impressed as a youth, and Primary "inservice" is what got me to read the entire Doctrine and Covenants for the first time.  I remember we had a little book mark with weekly reading assignments, and I faithfully read each assignment.
• Primary birthday pennies.  When we had a birthday, we brought a penny for each year of our lives and got to put them in the jar for the kids at Primary Children's Hospital after the rest of the primary children sang "This Month is Such a Special One...." or "Happy Happy Birthday Children Dear...." to the birthday honorees.

The "architectural indentation" where we played "colored eggs" I'm not sure WHY I have this picture of Patrice Pulsipher, Becky Waite, and Eric Russell at  Primary, but hey, it's a Primary pic :)

Me and my Dad before my baptism-Note the "yellow bee" car in the carport

Well, this post is long enough.  Interestingly, none of my Primary memories are of "gospel concepts" learned.  But I'm sure I learned something from Sister Waite, Aunt Elaine, and my other teachers, and the Primary songs all teach "gospel concepts, " and besides Primary was just a fun place to be (and still is-one of my favorite callings I've ever had was being the Primary chorister.)