They Absolutely Can’t Take It Away From You

We are knee deep into another August. I haven’t “gone back to school” in years. But you let it get a week or two into the dog days of August and my heart kinda sags. Like it did back WHEN I was going back to school every year.

I really believe Mom got me off to a bad start. She was so excited about me entering the first grade, she spiked my interest level. She talked about all the possibilities that lay ahead as I climbed the educational ladder. She mentioned (more than once) names like George Washington, the Andes Mountains, and Frederick Jackson Turner.

She couldn’t wait for me to get started. I went to school that very first day like that little orphan, Pip, filled with “Great Expectations.” Mom had said nothing about the painful vaccinations we had to take. She didn’t mention they would sit us alphabetically. You had to get in line to use the pencil trimmer. They had reading classes. Spelling bees. And my turn to go outside and dust the erasers only came around once in every other blue moon!

My little heart ached. Everybody seemed to know so much more than I did. I was afraid, lonely, unsure, out of place, and trapped. And I immediately realized this school thing had interrupted the carefree days at the swimming pool, the leisurely strolls to town whenever I took a notion, and the endless summer baseball games.

I didn’t think I would live till September!

Mom was right about George Washington. He was high up on everybody’s list in the first grade. I had to wait until junior high geography to find out about the Andes Mountains. And I was a sophomore in college before the educational system got around to Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis.

I was so happy the day I graduated from the first grade I didn’t even think about it being a pretty big accomplishment. I just thought “free at last, free at last, free at….” But you know, I had learned about our first president. I knew everybody’s name in the class. And that was good; I was going to go to school with most all of them for the next 11 years.

And I could spell cat, nut, cut, band, land, stand, and grand.

In the early days school was mostly about survival. And raising your hand to go to the bathroom.

Boy howdy, I dreaded going back for the second grade like the Bubonic Plague. She knew how smarter I was already. You live and learn. The reading classes became more difficult. And the spelling words got longer….as did the days.

As we moved through elementary school learning became routine. We didn’t think much about it. We just moved from spelling to reading class to math like it was the natural order of things. Buddy Wiggleton said more than once, “We’re learning this stuff whether we want to or not.”

He sounded like Plato. Or was it Pluto?

We had to “change classes” in the seventh grade. I worried all summer that I would be perpetually lost, alone wandering the halls, looking for my locker. In reality, it took one day for all of us to make that adjustment.

Maybe we were growing up some.

The adjustment in junior high was football. It was hotter than blue blazes under all that equipment! Sweat stung my eyes. We ran every day until someone passed out. The big boys would back up, get a good running start, and plow right over you. Again, and again!

Not all the learning occurred in the classroom.

We did discover the versatility of chewing gum and spit balls in junior high. Both could be used to exercise your jaw muscles, as an entertaining distraction, or as a weapon. The educational process was teaching us to develop some independent thinking.

By high school we just rolled with the punches. Chemistry, Chaucer, and logarithms created some challenges. And our spelling words had lengthened into onomatopoeia, extemporaneous, ostentatious, and anachronism.

But nothing deterred us from enjoying each other, and each day, to the maximum.

Graduation brought joy, sadness, exhilaration, tears, gratitude, and a sense of accomplishment.

The following August saw me off to college. It was like starting all over again! I was away from home. I knew practically no one at the university. And the football players were bigger.

Guess what? My little heart ached, again. Everybody, indeed, knew more than I did. I was afraid, lonely, unsure, out of place, and trapped.

I forgot the solid preparation I had worked on for years that allowed me to get here. I disremembered this was just one more stepping stone. The “one day at a time” maxim escaped me at the moment. And it did not dawn on me that they could not possibly have a word here harder to spell than anachronism.

I wish every student entering school this August the best at every turn. I would remind them of how much they are growing and learning with each step. But heck, let’s let them learn it the hard way…. like we did!

Respectfully,

Kes