100 Things About Me #123

Continued From: "100 Things About Me #122," part of the "Back to School" sequence

Tree, Sun

My Fernbank Elementary School looks much the same after half a century, excepting the bricked addition built onto the facility in 2005. Connected at the main entrance, the structure has two floors with kindergarten accommodations and a gymnasium.

The school didn't offer kindergarten in my era. I was at home with a stick and some dirt.

Today, that dirt is worth a lot more than I am. I should have become real estate.

Even with an education, life sticks it to me.

The fact that we lacked a gym never crossed my mind. We played outdoors, or inside classrooms when it rained. We had our fun and got exercise and expertise with finger-paints and musical chairs.

I'm much happier I had fresh air and sunshine and windows than an oppressive gymnasium, where children circulate like weenies under bake lights.

Also, I'm concerned this new wing may have doomed a tree which our proud second grade class planted at a ceremony on the lawn in 1960. I forget why exactly, but the leafy gift was a present to the school and accepted by the principal as an eternal commemoration of a sentimental, life-affirming purpose. I hope the tree has been preserved, because not doing so would be a breach, slaps in the faces of a fine bunch of earnest, trusting little kids.

Grown-ups wouldn't do that, right?

Right?


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