Archive for August, 2009

We’re going to redesign our Can I Sit With You? site header to be more representative of the wonderful school years stories shared in this space.

If you’d like to participate, please add a favorite photo from your school social years to our Can I Sit With You? Header photo pool on Flickr. Please remember to set your photo’s licensing rights to Creative Commons (on the right hand side of your photo, under Additional Information), and please don’t include recognizable images of other people without their permission.

Surely you can top this high school marching band practice photo, in which Shannon pairs a vintage 60’s sweater with an early ’80s mullet, a piccolo, and an imposing white shako hat?

We look forward to seeing you, or the former you. Thanks.

-Shan & Jen

I recently came across two blog posts, one recent and one from a few years ago; one from an author still struggling with the emotional scars of bullying, another from an author who has made peace with her social self,  past and present — and both of which underscore the need for this very Can I Sit With You? blog and book project in which we share social stories from our school years.

Why a need? Because in both cases, the authors felt completely isolated. In both cases, the authors had no idea that other kids were afloat on the same stormy social seas. In both cases, I suspect, the authors might have been relieved to hear their stories echoed from someone else’s perspective:

• PhD in Parenting: The Bully Who Defined Me
• Kate Goldfield: Normal Is Just a Setting on the Washing Machine

Do you have a story about a particularly prickly, challenging, or triumphant time in your social life at school?  Don’t forget to send it in. We publish new stories every week.

Here are your esteemed editors with Beatrice Hogg, author of the story Cootie Girl from Can I Sit With You Too?, and her friend Gladys. Beatrice is even cooler than her cheeky story of surviving school suggests, and it was great fun meeting her on her trip to the Bay Area.

Don’t forget to send in your own stories about making it through schools’ social minefields!