THE LAST DAY

Each Kid Year is marked with waiting and hoping…of course the First day of School starts with the sands running through the hourglass.  Next comes the first important event – the first day off from arithmetic and spelling ! Columbus Day.  Good ole Chris – if he had fallen off the edge of the world we wouldn’t  have had a day to play.  (Editor's Note: In Calvin’s day they celebrated holidays on the days they happened also President Lincoln was not merged with all the other dead Presidents).  Next was the mysterious State Education Association (a union in disguise),  two day vacation when our teachers got together to supposely learn the newest student torture methods, select new ponderous textbooks about South America and wars and longer words for us to learn to spell.  (Later in life I attended many of this meetings and found they mostly centered around cocktail parties with free shrimp supplied by book publishers)  

Next was Turkey Day.  I got in big trouble because of this holiday when I was in fourth grade on Parents Visitation Day.  My Grandmother sat in for Mom who was working at the glass factory.  During a lesson about the first Thanksgiving, for some unknown reason, I raised my hand when Miss R (the terror of Bacon school for her reputation “very strict”,  asked if we had any questions.  I said, “I really am confused because I really don’t think the Pilgrims had much to be thankful... a lot of them died…they were living in shacks with no bathrooms…and all they had to eat was corn.”  There was a gasp from the many parents in the back of the room – a bigger reaction came from Miss R  who just stood agape for a long moment and then I realized she was not pleased.  She said, “Well that certainly is a different point of view.”  The audience of parents giggled. This set her off.  She barked angrily, “Calvin you have totally missed the whole point of this lesson!”   I wasn’t really sure why as it made perfect sense to me.   After the parents left she invited me to her desk where she basically told me to keep my bizarre ideas to myself for the rest of my life.   The biggie, Christmas Vacation was coming next in just a couple of endless weeks of waiting.  We spent a lot of time drawing Christmas cards for our family, stringing popcorn for the class tree and making endless red and green construction paper chains that festooned our classroom.

And so, my 4th grade year passed holiday by holiday as we all grew and learned in spite of ourselves.  By March, I knew that Bolivia exports tin.  By Easter break, I was spelling every word correctly on those hated narrow spelling test papers.  I  had read most of Evangeline.  And, I could recite the Gettysburg address from memory.   Our class was becoming learned scholars as Miss R constantly reminded us.  I personally would rather play first base for the Phillies.  (Editor’s  Note: Calvin never achieved either of these goals.)  

And then the trees bloomed and the classroom windows were pushed up as summer vacation crept up on us.  The big one.  Weeks and weeks and weeks of fun loomed around the corner…swimming in Union Lake…baseball till dusk...staying up late.  This is what we worked so “hard” for all year.  To get it over.  And the final day came.  We turned in our books as Miss R. recorded their condition on the inside of the very worn covers.  Mine were all listed as “Good” (even though one was 22 years old) and I was very relieved that my grocery bag covers had done their job through snow, sleet and the dropping the big reading book in a large puddle.  Mother would not have to reimburse the Bacon School Board for any books with the dreaded broken spine or torn out pages this year.  The clock we all were watching made another loud click and the buzzer buzzed.  We bid Miss R goodbye and raced out the door.  Our kid's year was complete.  Yelps and hoots echoed through the hall.  We literally ran to begin our fun filled adventures in the warm summer sun.  It would take about a week and a half for this glee to turn to abject boredom for us all.  Plus, it rained a lot that summer.  By the end of June I started to yearn for fifth grade to come as quickly as possible.  

Moral: Expectation, for the most part, exceeds

reality.  The imagined usually tops being. Even

for a fourth grader!