Here goes:
Elementary School Grades 1-4
School recesses introduced me to delights of all kinds, some discomfort, and more discipline surprises. The front yard of our first-through-fourth-grade school, was good old dirt and gravel. It was perfect for using a stick to outline the rooms of our houses in which we played together. One would be the mother, one the father, the others would be the children. Being a parent allowed me to order everyone about, and although I seldom played that role, I could enjoy it when it was my turn. Part of “keeping house” was to get a small branch from an evergreen bush and sweep the dirt until there were no rocks showing. I remember having a sense of determination and delight in whipping that little broom back and forth over the outlined space until another game was announced by one of the more dominant girls.
We might play hide and seek, or “Mother may I?”, or even jacks with its onesies, twosies, and so on. But the most fun was playing cowboys and horses. All the girls wore dresses to school, and each dress had a tie belt in the back. When untied, these belts, one on either side of the dress, made perfect reins, and each boy would select a girl, grab her sashes and boy and girl would race through the grass at the back of the school yelling at the top of their lungs. Larry Taylor, my cursing instructor, and I were always Roy Rogers and Trigger. It was exhilarating to gallop and prance and race for all we were worth. However, when I arrived home with one or the other piece of belt in my hand, my frazzled mother, home with a baby and toddler, would heave a sigh of disgust and let me hear about my lack of respect for the clothes on my back.
During one particularly heated game of hide and seek, I went charging up the school stairs to the “free” wall, and for some reason collided head on with it and knocked myself out. I woke up in the time-out room with a woman pressing a cold, dinner-knife blade against the great lump on my forehead, which of course did nothing to help, but only intensified my pain. I can only assume she thought the coldness would help reduce the swelling. Perhaps this was the beginning of my disillusionment with institutions. Of course I heard about my stupid behavior when I got home, “What were you thinking?”, a really intelligent question that parents are prone to ask.
“Mother may I?” was a common game, a must in which to participate, but Susan, the very tall girl in my class, one most likely to take the lead, could pack a whollop that made you think twice about playing. There was a landing outside the side door of the school with stairs up to it and back down. Susan would stand on the landing, and each of us would line up at the bottom of the stairs. Susan would give directives, such as “Hop on one foot.” The next victim would perform the stated function, and if she remembered first to say, “Mother may I?” Susan would command her to the landing with “You’re my child, get home!” land a painful spank to the rear, the girl ran disappearing quickly down the other side returning to the end of the line for another go at it. If the expected words were not uttered, the shamed fool was sent around to the back of the line without the spank. Who was the real fool?
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