School Days, School Daze

I used to be a bit of a wanderer. Take my big debut to May Morley Elementary School one fine May day in the mid '60s. Having just mastered whistling on my commutes to Merry Manor Preschool, I figured I was a shoo-in for the next big thing--elementary school.

Mrs. Marsh, however, thought that--like a fine wine--I could use another year to mellow. Apparently, she was bothered by my propensity to stand up and move around during her rousing explanation of how bathroom breaks worked at the elementary level.

Not much more than a wispy, pinched woman, Mrs. Marsh nonetheless held the cards to my future. And my card was not would not be pulled. At least that year.

By 1973, I would find myself hovering on the brink of junior high, haunted by undocumented rumors of hallway stabbings and sexual trysts too boggling even for my youngest-of-five mind.

Alas, despite those tawdry tales, I managed to make it through East Junior-Senior High Educational Complex without so much as a single sighting of some punk's blade, much less an R-rated close encounter of the sexual kind. Such rumors often end in this way--with a sigh and a tinge of disappointment.

Talk about a complex. . . .

Standing at the brink of my 21st year as a paid employee at East High ("junior" and "complex" having long been pried off the building's face), I think it's important that I recall both Mrs. Marsh and hallway stabbings. Both are reminders of the heightened state of concern that accompanies most kids to their new schools.

Tomorrow, about 300 kids will enter East's doors for the first time, most of them hoping not to see something that reads like a storyline from "CSI: Miami" or "Jersey Shore." They are scared to death by the prospect of getting lost. Most have been awakened in the middle of the night (much like myself, though for different reasons) by nightmares of unreliable locker combinations and towering, cranky senior athletes with a penchant for pranks.

If I forget the sweaty-lipped realities of these new students, I could slip into a hum-drum mentality that does little to soothe the savage freshman beast or light the upperclass fires.

No, it's important for me to push aside these ho-hum tendencies and, instead, view the beginning of the school year for what it really is--a beginning, not just another bleary-edged day in a long continuum that, eventually, leads towards a well-earned retirement.