Pamela Haist :: essays research papers

I love my grandmother (or whom I call Nana) very much and I look up to her more than anyone else I know. She’s smart, kind, funny, social, and very outgoing. I remember one time at the mall, when she was walking up the â€Å"down† escalator, and she couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the stupid thing! She just kept walking up it, and cursing at it wondering what was wrong. As you’ve probably guessed, my speech is about Nana, my greatest role model. Pamela Haist was born in March, Cambridgeshire, England on March 19, 1924. Her name at that time was Pamela Muriel Bailey. She was raised by her grandmother and uncles until she was about eight years old because her father and mother could not afford to keep a child at that time. According to Mrs. Haist this was quite common in a time before unemployment insurance and social benefits. She was an only child, and raised with very strict rules. For instance, every night she had to be in bed by six o'clock. She had to lie in the bedroom of her two-level house, listening to her friends playing out in the streets until she fell asleep. This continued until she was twelve or thirteen years of age. Despite the rules that may have hurt other people's social skills, Miss Bailey had many friends as a child. She told me of one friend that she remembers quite well, her best friend Daphne. "When I was a young girl," she reflected with a laugh, "I remember us going out one day to play. We were on our bikes, which is how we usually got around, wearing our best Sunday clothes at the time, white frocks with frilly lace. We were walking along the wall of the sewage centre. I said 'Let's go over that wall and see what's there. I'll help you over first. Come on, it will be ever so much fun.' So I helped her up over the wall and she landed right in a sewer filled with muck. I said 'I'll be right over. Keep on going!' By the time she came out, her dress (for picture day) was filthy! She came up to me the next day and said 'My mother says I'm not to have anything more to do with you.' But of course that didn't last five minutes." Miss Bailey did very well in school with various subjects.