Courtney's Blog My thoughts...Or lack there of

Elementary Memories

I remember my elementary school years very well. I remember whenever my Dad would walk me to my class we would sing, "Don't step on a crack or you'll fall and break your back." And I would try my hardest not to step on a crack. Which at certain points in the sidewalk could get very challenging.

I remember there were two playgrounds. One for the kindergarten-2nd graders, and another playground on the other side of the school for the 3rd-5th graders. On the "little kids" side there was a big metal slide that was sooo tall. And it would take forever to climb the ladder up to the top. That thing was a deathtrap, which probably made it so fun. It really wasn't as tall as I remembered it, but a fall from the top could sure hurt a little kid. And what made it so dangerous was that you would have about 20-30 kids trying to climb it all at the same time. We would scramble up the top pushing and shoving our way through, until we made it and then... Remember I said it was a big metal slide. You would slide down that monstrosity that had been in the sun all day long and it would burn all unclothed skin. So if you were wearing shorts... let's just say it wasn't the most pleasant sensation. But then the next day after your wounds had healed all the kids would do it all over again.

I remember at lunch each class had to line up alphabetically. Kindergarteners first then all the way up to the 5th graders. You would walk through the line, and the secretary, Mrs. Vargas, would mark you off or something so that the school knew you got lunch that day. At the end of the month, if your parents chose to pay at the end of every month for your lunches, your teacher would give you a notice that you would take home to your parents to let them know they needed to pony up the doe. I would get my notice every month, immediately put it in my backpack, and completely forget about it. Then the next month they would give you another notice and give you a warning. I would put it in my backpack and forget about it. And this would go on and on. The threat was, that if you didn't pay for your lunches then you would have to go to the secretary's office and be forced to eat a cold peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Ooooh! So scary. Cold PB&Js. Most kids like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I guess they thought that since they were cold it was more frightening. Not only did the ridiculous threat not scare us, they never followed through with it. No matter how many notices I forgot to give my parents, and no matter how many lunches went unpaid for, I never once had to eat a cold peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Another lunch memory I have is about one meal. They would have bologna sandwich day, quesadilla day, but the day everyone dreaded was... Grilled cheese sandwich day. I know, I know, grilled cheeses sound pretty harmless right? Wrong. These grilled cheese sandwiches were hard as a rock. They were like beige bricks. You could have made a very sturdy house out of them. It would hurt your teeth to eat them. We kids were amazed at just how hard these things were. We would bang them repeatedly on the tables, and nothing would happen to them. Nothing at all. If you waited long enough for seconds. Which very few kids did, because as soon as you were done with lunch you could go to recess. So the faster you ate your lunch, the more playtime you'd have. But if you did wait around for seconds, they would be serving the very last of the grilled cheeses, the ones from the bottom of the tray. These were slightly less hard. I guess they soaked up all the butter or whatever into them, which made them actually edible.

I remember every morning you would go to your class once the bell rang. Then there was a small amount of time for the teachers to do attendance, and then the bell would ring again. All the classes would then go to a big room. Actually it wasn't that big since there were only about 150 students in the entire school. We would say the pledge of allegiance, sing happy birthday to whatever little brat happened to be born on that day. My brother played happy birthday on the piano every day. Mrs. Bradberry the kindergarten teacher would play her, well I'm not exactly sure what is was, but anyway we would sing songs. And maybe there would be announcements or something. The point of this memory is, the room all the kids would meet in was called the IMC. I never did know what IMC stood for.

I remember that once you got to the 5th grade, you would sometimes have to do lunch duty. Now I hardly ever had to because I was in band. If you were in band you got out of it most of the time. But a couple of times I had to do lunch duty. The best position on the lunch duty team was the sprayer. I actually got to be the sprayer once. The sprayer stands at the end of the line and all the kids bring there dirty trays to them. The sprayer had this long hose that hung from the ceiling and you got to spray all the food off the trays, and "accidentally" spray the kids who brought you their trays. It took so long that you completely miss your recess, but it was worth it.

One last memory. If you were bad, you would have to stand along the fence, for recess, and have to watch everyone else play. That was one of their very scary then, now pretty silly punishments. Out of my 5 years of elementary school. I only had to stand along the fence once. It was in the 1st grade. My 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Coleman-Webb. Left the classroom for a little bit. I don't remember why. While she was gone, some of the kids got up and started running around the room. When Mrs. Coleman-Webb came back she saw a bunch of her students running around the room. The kids quickly went back to their seats. Since she couldn't tell just who was running around the room, and who wasn't, she made the whole class stand along the fence.

Okay, one more memory, but I'm telling you this is the last one. Another silly punishment was pulling cards. If you misbehaved or broke a rule you had to pull a card. Only in Kindergarden-3rd grade classrooms, I guess by the time you were in 4th or 5th grade pulling cards wasn't harsh enough. But in the younger classes on one wall there would be a big yellow square with a bunch of yellow pockets with each student's name on it. In the pockets were 5 colored cards: Yellow, red, blue, green, and black. Black was really bad. Every day all the student's cards would be on yellow. If you did something wrong you would pull a card. The punishments would get worse and worse as you pulled more and more cards. Black meant you had to go to the principle's office. I only had to pull a card once. It was in the 2nd grade, Mrs. Rocha's class. If you forgot to sign your name on an assignment you had to pull a card. Well, one time I had an assignment that was stapled to another. I signed my name on the first page, and didn't on the second. Mrs. Rocha made me pull a card for not signing my name on the second page. It was so unfair. I almost cried. After a little while of my name having a horrific red card next to it. Mrs. Rocha told me I could put it back to yellow. I guess she came to her senses!

Isn't it funny the things you remember?

posted by Courtney at Friday, September 16, 2005