Had to think on this a bit. I grew up on a farm that bordered a creek. When I was age single-digits my cousins (next door neighbors) and I used to wander round the creek bottom freely doing whatever (our families owned the land and part of the creek bottom). Our Dads were brothers and partners in farming.
For grades 1-3, I attended a 2-room parochial school operated by my parents' church. After my 3rd grade year the school closed and I went to public school (all the way through high school). I miss the parochial school, as bullying and other such did not happen. PS I do not miss, as I had a "target" on my back until my junior year. I became and still am, to some degree, a loner.
When I was in Phoenix attending De Vry and a couple years after, part of that time I ran sound for a couple of Christian rock bands. I miss that time, playing at local venues. After I moved to Silicon Valley that I met my wife, had kids, etc..
Amusing story (?) ... because the parochial school had just two rooms and was grades 1-8, I had the same teacher in grades 1 and 2. In that time I learned to read and to enjoy reading, so much so that the teacher chewed out my parents a bit for pushing me to read so much. They hadn't pushed me and were puzzled. They all - parents and teacher - realized I simply liked reading. I had a different teacher for 3rd grade because the teacher I had had moved on. At the end of the year when the school closed because they couldn't afford to pay the teachers enough, the 3rd grade teacher gave me copies of the 4th (last in the Fun With Dick and Jane series) and 5th grade readers (they were almost falling apart, so they would otherwise have been tossed out), which I went through during that summer.
