I was a bit like that mother when I chose to study journalism at the University of Missouri in 1932. It never occurred to me that I could be paid for teaching fun things like tennis, archery, swimming and team sports. A paying job and the fun of sports, games and crafts were two different worlds to me in the 1930s. Also, the Depression made fun jobs scarce.

Mom had finished high school, and Dad, raised by four sisters, quit after the eighth grade to work in the fields. However, he often said, "You two kids must get a good education so you won’t have to be farmers." Of course, our goals matched our parents’ wishes.

As a freshman at MU, I joined the women’s rifle club for $5. We used Army rifles and were taught by Capt. Hand and Sgt. Vera. We could use all of the ammunition we wanted, so almost every day I climbed to the fourth floor to the rifle range for practicing and shooting competition targets. We shot in Jesse Hall’s unfinished attic, where rafters were in sight over our heads and winter winds howled outside and in. Practice helped me qualify for the team all four years. Colleges compared scores telegraphically with other teams in the United States and Canada, and weekly, we often ranked among the best 10.

Each year the women with the 10 highest total scores were awarded white, shaker wool letter sweaters. I earned four! I also was initiated into the Missouri Musketeers club.

Several of us from Missouri University’s Lab High School had enjoyed the use of the MU women’s pool, playing fields and student teachers since seventh grade. Therefore, we had a head start on students from other high schools. Physical education was great fun, and I never considered that teachers might be paid for teaching those great activities.

I qualified for the American Red Cross senior life-saving training and later became a Red Cross life-saving and water-safety "examiner."

Then, Boone County sent me to a National Aquatic School in Eureka Springs, Ark. After Ruby Cline’s advanced swimming class, I passed the requirements for admission into the Missouri Mermaids Club, which put on public water shows and helped with intramural swimming meets. Miss Cline took five of us to Kansas City to participate in an AAU swimming meet. That was an exciting experience for this country girl.

I made varsity teams in archery, baseball, volleyball and basketball and was captain sometimes, but it never occurred to me that my teachers were working! They certainly weren’t "sufferin’."

Along with all of that, I was plugging away in journalism. Miss Frances Grindstead and Roscoe Ellard taught me to research the facts and to use the dictionary for correct spelling. When my term paper "Socialism In 1936" came back, Ellard had written, "This is an E paper, but you get only an S grade because you coined the word ‘candidate.’ "

Perhaps I’d been concentrating on the wrong things and should have been "sufferin’ " more.

By a lucky turn of events, I spent 33 years at Christian (now Columbia) College teaching fun stuff!