The Dirty Daisies

Friday night I met an old friend, Kay Benjamin, at Fibber Magees in Chandler.   We went there to listen to Irish music.  Kay and I taught together many years ago at Gilbert Jr. High.   Kay recently moved back to Arizona having lived in Colorado and Utah. Her daughter, Amy, was with her.  I think it has been over 20 years since I have seen her and we connected a few years back on Facebook. Actually, I connected with her husband, Charles, who has since passed away.  

We had so much fun during those years when our kids were little and we were young.   We had a tight group of friends and I feel fortunate to still have these wonderful people in my life even though I don't see them often.

We had so much fun together last night.  The Irish music was great .  Her birthday is today and she turns 76.  It doesn't seem possible that time has passed so quickly.

We danced and sang despite the fact that my dancing is certainly not the best and my singing is definitely not even good.

When I got home, i found my picture that I always kept in my offices through the years.    It is of the "original" Dirty Daisies.

Below is a post that I did before I retired in 2015 about memories from my career in education.

Still remembering my first years of teaching special education.   As I have said, I was at both Gilbert Elementary and Gilbert Junior during that time.   I had kids from fourth through eighth grades--sometimes self-contained some times just for reading or math.   I worked with some great people who became such good friends.   

The other day, Sue Dunning asked if I remembered the Dirty Daisies---Remember them, I was a "founding flower" of the Dirty Daisy Society!! It was such a fun time! One day, several of us heard that some of the male teachers belonged to a secret society called The Red, Red Rose. It was supposedly a national association and they were not allowed to talk about it. Well, you can imagine how we took off with this information.

Dawn Hughes, Martha Wallace, Kay Benjamin and I decided to start Gilbert's answer to the Red, Red Rose Society, aka as the Dirty Daisies.  So the Dirty Daisy Society was started.  We had bylaws, a slogan and even a t-shirt.  Our slogan was "some seeds sow weeds!" We expanded our membership and you had to be "voted" in to join.   I can tell you that any female teacher who wanted to be a Dirty Daisy could be one--we weren't that selective.

Later after I became an administrator, several of my admin buddies became "Dirty Daisies"--Connie, Nikki, Jill, Sherryl--just to name a few. One of the funniest times was when we were at an administrators' picnic and our wonderful supt, Wally, burned one of our t-shirts!!!

What great times we had during those years!!!