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I don’t remember graduating from kindergarten. But I bet you we had ice cream and Miss Katie hugged each one of us. I’m not too far out on a limb here. Two of Miss Katie’s all time favorite things were ice cream and hugging.
If me and Yogi talked about life lessons we had learned in the past two years in her small living room, they escape me now. And I can’t imagine we brought up what life would be like in the next stage. We were so young, naïve, wet behind the ears……we didn’t know there was a future.
We were all about the here and now.
And let me tell you, they about “here and nowed” us to death in elementary school! I thought we were never going to get out of that place! It was just study, work, read, add, subtract, multiply, dust the erasers and gosh awful spelling bees. About the only time you could breathe was lunch and recess.
I don’t think you “graduate” from elementary school, you escape!
Miss Mary Ann Jackson, our sixth grade teacher, didn’t allow any valedictorian addresses. Nobody marched anywhere. We didn’t have a “reflection” period. I don’t remember her bringing up the future. And she didn’t pass out ice cream or hug anybody.
She made us memorize AND GET UP IN FRONT OF THE WHOLE CLASS AND RECITE “Little Boy Blue” by Eugene Field and our elementary school days were behind us.
Just like that.
We were so busy living we didn’t hardly notice.
Junior high was a time for exploring. It could be silly. And exhilarating. Confusing. A lot of trial and error. Deeds and misdeeds. Embarrassments! Hard choices. Acne. And a ton of growing! In the twisted, revolving, up and down moments of that “here and now”…..school buddies became lifelong friends.
I know what you are thinking. Finally! High school graduation! We got it. We had figured out where we were, were so thankful for our fulfilling past and were looking forward to a future filled with hope and aspirations.
You’d be dead wrong.
We sat in that vinyl covered back booth out at Frank’s Dairy Bar and tried to determine if we were graduating FROM something…..or TO something!
I can’t speak for the others—you understand “cool personified” was the order of the day for teenagers in 1965—but as Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman” blasted out of Frank’s jukebox I was mostly scared. Life up until now, no matter how many peaks and valleys we thought we had survived, was fairly structured.