It's still third grade somewhere
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Pirate modeMy wife found an old photo while cleaning up this weekend, and it brings back memories. This is my 3rd grade class from O'Brien Elementary, in Kent, Washington, from 1966—almost 40 years ago. And about two thirds of these kids I can remember well, since I saw them every year in junior and senior high school, too. It's strange to look at those young and well-remembered faces, and know well what they would have ahead of them in the next ten years, but not have any idea what has happened to them since—other than that, like me, those nine-year-old kids are now in their late forties. Oh, what a shock! Some will have had more than their share of sorrow, and some may have had almost as much happiness as they deserve, but all will have discovered that life is far more complex than they could have imagined.
And for you younger readers, I have to tell you…that buck-toothed kid with the crewcut in the middle row is still here. All of us greying geezers still have a little boy or girl somewhere inside us, and there are still days when we're a little dismayed that we're not going to have recess after lunch, or that we don't get to go home to mom and dad anymore. Youth is never really gone, it just gets buried under layers of new stuff as time goes by.
Top row: Cindy Burton, Kathleen Sturtz, Nancy Bull, Mary McHugh, Debbie Long, Becky Barnier, Darlene Yamada, Susan Rea, Billie Anderson, Mary McKay, Cathy Jenkins
2nd row: Mrs Janes, Richard Campbell, Richard Nault, Arthur Yabara, Brian Pittenger, Chris Bauer, Loren Deanton, Pat McCart, Paul Myers, Steven Brewer, Tommy Marino, Rob Kimoto
3rd row: Kathy Willkie, Jill Johnson, Mary Gjerness, Linda Bevilaqua, Mike Dixon, Carla Fleming, Patty Spitzer, Cathy Jones, LaJuana Smalley, Bill McDaniel
The picture came in a yellowed cardboard folder with the names written in it, and with this little note:
Dear Parents:
Here is your child's class group picture. It should be a treasured memory in years to come
The Price is, 50¢
If you do not wish to keep the picture, Please return it to school tomorrow, so another child may have the opportunity to purchase it.
Thank you,
Your School Photographer
The picture does make me wonder what long-lost childhood friends are doing. I do know fairly well what one of those other kids has been up to, though. That girl in front, third from the left? The really hot one, with the nice smile? Married her. Not right then, of course—I waited a respectable fourteen years longer, and then I jumped her.
As you might imagine, when my daughter brings home school pictures I tend to scrutinize the boys' faces suspiciously.
One of my WOSIJMU (wise old saying I just made up):
We carry within us all our previous selves.
Inside each of us there is a 5-year-old, and a 9-year-old, someone 12, and 15, and 22. The best path to maturity is the one where we come to accept and love, respect and cherish those previous selves, and all of their gifts: their curiosity, their stubborness, their uncertainty, their bright optimism, their yearning, and even their lust.
And sometimes, as a reward for a job well done, it's good to let them out to enjoy the world again, if only for a few minutes:
To laugh out loud for no good reason,
To gleefully sing at the top of your lungs,
To become fascinated with something new and utterly useless,
To spin on the lawn until you fall down dizzy.
.
.
.
<And, by the way, the best friends are the tolerant kind, the ones who will humor you while you go off and "be yourself" again.>