This week we've been getting Brianna prepared for her first day of kindergarten. It's got me thinking about my first day. Getting on that big yellow bus and discovering what I can only describe as "bus smell," which is sort of a combination of gasoline and thirty or so peanut butter and jelly sandwiches mixed with that inimitable new plastic smell.
I remember waiting for the bus with my mom, Jen, and her mom. I remember my Gremlins lunchbox. I remember I wore a striped shirt. Okay, so I'm just describing the picture, but there really are some things I remember about that first day away from home.
In fact, the first memory I have of school is of a kid named Raymond. I don't remember much about Raymond, and to be honest, I don't think I ever even saw him. But Raymond sat behind me on the bus on that first day of kindergarten. And Raymond was not ready to interact with other children. Raymond spazzed out. He grabbed the kid in front of him (yeah...that would be me) and started choking him from behind with what I imagine to be a glint of sheer joy in his eye. He was grabbed by some adults and abruptly pulled off me, cementing at least one more year of sitting at home shoving crayons up his nose. I'll give him credit: not many people can get kicked out of school before they ever set foot in it. Here's to you Raymond, you crazy bastard, wherever you are.
Anyway, in honor of Brianna's first day of school, here are some of my memories from Thomas V. Nash Elementary School.
Our principal was Mr. McCorkle. Otis H. McCorkle, the most principal-sounding name ever. We used to call the papers we'd get from him "a notice from Otis." Every time he announced something over the loudspeaker he would start with "Ah, attention please..." and end with "That is all. Thank you!"
I was in Miss Shea's first grade class when the Challanger exploded. We watched it on television. I don't think I really understood what was going on. All I knew was that something important must have happened for them to bring the television from the library into the classroom. I will never forget that day.
I remember reading with Ms. Brown, the librarian. She reminded me of Diane from Cheers. She used to read "Riki Tiki Tavi" and "Miss Nelson is Missing!" to us. One year Ms. Brown got married, but her new name was ridiculously long and hard to pronounce, so I continued to refer to her as "Ms. Brown."
I remember Brian Larkin, effecionately known for one reason or another as "Bubba." Bubba Larkin was our school's Scut Farkas. A schoolyard thug whose antics invariably got him banned from field day every year.
I remember Mrs. Lavangie, the lunch lady. We weren't allowed to talk during lunch, and it was her job to enforce the law. She walked around with a clipboard, shouting "Ah, that's a check!" at anyone who made a sound. If you got three checks, you'd have to sit up on the stage of the cafeteria-auditorium-gymnasium until lunch was over. I guess that was supposed to be bad. I don't know. You'd think they would have come up with something a little more threatening. Usually she had her hands full with the sixth graders, so us younger kids talked quietly while she was down at the other end of the room.
And who could forget the school's flamboyant music teacher, Mr. LaPiere? He was the musical equivilant of Richard Simmons, minus the tiny shorts. He'd wheel his piano into the class once a week and make us practice our singing exercises. He always hit impossibly high notes; I kind of wonder if his balls never dropped.
Nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
That's what he'd have us do. Say the word "new" and hold it until our lungs collapsed. Sometimes he'd bring a big red rubber dodgeball in and throw it to whoever he decided should say "new" next. That was doubly embarrassing for me because that exposed both my inability to sing or catch a ball.
Nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Years later when I met kids from other parts of town, I learned that they too had Mr. LaPiere, except rather than a piano, he'd bring in a little keyboard. That's a shame, because you can't really get the same sound from a keyboard as you can with a piano. Plus, it was just plain funny to watch him push that giant piano around the whole school.
When I was in fifth grade, one of the sixth grade teachers was fired. From what I heard the reasoning behind it was that he was narcoleptic, and would sometimes fall asleep in the middle of class. I didn't really know the whole story, but the whys didn't matter. The important part of the story was that now there was only one sixth grade teacher. Miss Hanian.
Miss Hanian. Her name alone is enough to send a chill down your spine. Hanian, as in heinous. She was far scarier than anything any kid could dream up. A fearsome disiplanarian that screamed with all the throaty horror of the fires of Hell. On any given day, you could hear her Banshee cry echo down the halls and through the very spines of trembling kids. At recess, she stood on a hill with mirrored sunglasses watching over the playground like a gargoyle. Nobody wanted Ms. Hanian.
As sixth grade loomed closer, there was still no one to fill the vacancy. We were doomed.
But we weren't doomed. Well, half of us weren't, anyway. That summer they hired a new teacher, Mr. Brink. That year would go on to be the best time I ever had in school. That's actually kind of sad, considering I still had six more years of school left.
But it was a great year. Full of firsts. It was the first year the Barbie twins were in the same class. Ben and Megan Barbie, together for the first time. It was also the first time the three Elizabeths were in the same class. The Smart One, the Cute One, and the Quiet One. We didn't have a Ringo. Honestly, they were all smart, and all cute. But one was just a little smarter, one just a little cuter, and only one of them was quiet.
I always had a thing for the Quiet One. I remember I used to see her at recess in first grade. I didn't know who she was, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. In first grade! She ended up in my class the next year, and again in forth and sixth grades. One year at Jen's birthday party, Jen started crying because she said we were ruining her party. I don't even remember what exactly happened, I just remember her saying that. I think it was because I was the only boy there.
I was always the only boy at her parties, but that year she also invited Nathan Stockton. She had a crush on him, but he had "soccer practice" and couldn't make it. Maybe she couldn't take seeing us flirt, if you could even call it that. It never got any further than flirting, and I never told Liz after all those years that I liked her, something that would become a recurring theme in my life. So that's how that whole deal started.
Mr. Brink was great. His classroom didn't look like other classrooms. He had a huge Happy Meal collection on a shelf running all across the room. We learned about ancient Egypt and created board games based on what we learned. We disected squid. When he had gym, we played Brinkball, which was kind of like Doctor and Spy.
Sometime's he'd tell these corny jokes under the guise of anecdotes about himself, or more commonly, his cousin Otto. These stories always ended with a few laughs, a lot of groans, and Lakeisha, possibly the sweetest person ever and one of Weymouth's two black people, saying "I don't get it." Then twenty minutes later when we are doing math she'd say "The pig squealed. Now I get it!" and laugh uncontrollably for three minutes.
At some point, Mr. Brink had to have his gall bladder removed and was out of school for a few weeks. I can't remember who we had as a replacement, because there was a few different substitutes we used to have. There was Ms. Log (pronounced Low-g), who scared everybody by scowling all the time and looking like Bea Arthur. She used to give us the first answer on tests and say "It's my gift to you." She even sounded like Bea Arthur. Then there was Mr. Young, the Oldest Man on the Planet. And of course Mr. DiSessa, who looked like a turtle. Or a shriveled up dead indian, like those Weequay things in Return of the Jedi.
The school closed after that year. I was going to another school for seventh grade anyway, but it was still sad. They closed a few schools and restructured the whole school system because there were too many schools and not enough kids, then re-opened a few years later when there were too many kids and not enough schools. I guess the people who make decisions like that didn't realize that all the babies being born in the town when they closed the schools would be starting school in a few years. Gotta love the system.
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