Fat Ralphie, Buff Gabe and Roberta; or The 3rd grader diaries

So I've discovered that there is a soldier in the US Army reading my blog. He is in Iraq working with Iraqi forces. He puts comments on mine, then I read his, and I think, "Wow. I'm shallow." It kind of makes my blog about sitcoms and sandwiches look pretty useless...
That won't stop me though. I do have deep thoughts, but I usually reserve those for my personal journal- the one I don't publish on the internet for my friends and everyone in the US Armed Forces to read. I've been journaling since I was in 3rd grade. There's nothing like sitting home and thumbing through those old journals. In 3rd grade, I mostly wrote about how both Dominic and Frankie liked Roberta, but no one liked me, except fat Ralphie and Gabe, who was freakishly buff for a 3rd grader. Roberta was my nemesis- my arch-enemy, if you will. She was prettier than me. She could sing. She was smart and rich. I, on the other hand, looked oddly like a Puerto Rican boy because I was always super tan, and I had a mullet. I had to sing with the boys in music class because I had a deep raspy voice for some reason when I was only 9. I was smart but my parents weren't as rich as hers. To be fair to my parents, who were both law-abiding citizens, it's very likely that Roberta's grandpa was affiliated with the mob and her mom probably kept a cash-filled shoebox under her bed, or at least that's what I told myself when Roberta came to school in a cooler outfit from Madigans than the one I had. Her parents were divorced too and she rarely saw her dad, which, now that I look back on it, the fact that I had both parents at home was probably more significant than the fact that she could sing and I couldn't. But, at the time, all that mattered was that Dominic and Frankie liked her, and no one liked me. Those old journals, or as I called them back then, "diaries", are pretty funny to read. I still have a little chip on my should about Roberta. She's probably still hotter than me, and I bet Dominic and Frankie-type guys are always throwing themselves at her feet. Meanwhile, I still get fat Ralphie and buff Gabe types hitting on me. I wonder if she even remembers me. Here I am blogging about her and she probably hasn't even so much as thought about me since the day I moved out of that town in 7th grade. I did run into her once at Nordstrom. She said she was working there part-time, but I like to think she will be working in the Nordstrom shoe department for the rest of her life. Not that the 20% discount isn't probably pretty sweet, but I am a teacher. I'm a role model, god damnit! I make a difference in the world.... or something like that. Plus, I have summers off.
I got to see Rosa and Gianna today (the babies in the Cutie Pies post). Gianna is such a good little girl. The expression on her face in that post is the same one she has all the time. Then there's Rosa. She's a little pain in the ass, but so cute and funny. She has quite a personality. Gianna will too, once Rosa lets her have some of the spotlight. Of course, now my sister is pregnant again, and the new one will be born even before Gianna is 1-year-old. And so develops the middle child complex....
Well, I'm pretty tired. Tara need sleepie....