The Big Playground

My first grade classroom at Reavis Elementary was all the way at the back of the school. It was the farthest classroom from the entrance but it was the closest one to the main playground where the big kids played. (Kindergartners were segregated during recess but first graders were thrown in with the 'general population'). It was a bit intimidating - most of them looked like giants to me, but it was a lot more entertaining than the Kindergarten playground...

I learned a lot of rhymes during recess. Things like:

I see Paris, I see France, I see [girls name]'s underpants!
(And that's why girls avoided the jungle gym)

Hi! Ho! Silverware! Tonto lost his underwear!
Me don't know! Me don't care! Lone Ranger buy me 'nother pair!
(I never understood the point of that one - it's just offensive)

Khrushchev is no friend of mine... He looks just like Frankenstein!
When he does the Irish jig... He looks more like Porky Pig!
(That's a surprisingly accurate portrayal of Khrushchev's appearance)

Then there was the "Eenie Meenie Miney Moe" thing. The local variant involved catching a monkey and making him pay $50 a day. Apparently some other localities weren't quite as politically correct...

Ahh. Good times!

Of course, you can't expect me to blog about my childhood without musing about some type of 'perceived injustice' so here's the story:

One day I was standing there on the playground watching the big kids play some type of kickball game when this fat kid (I think he was a second grader) ran into me and knocked me flat on my face. I don't think he did it on purpose - I think he just got going and couldn't stop or change directions - you know, Newtonian physics and all :-) - he didn't even check to see if I was OK...
I was hurt a bit, but not too badly. And as I was slowly lifting my face off the asphalt, a sixth grader (who was running after a ball) didn't see me and stepped on the back of my head thereby slamming my forehead into the pavement with the full weight of his body. Talk about adding injury to insult! (It was my first concussion - also the first time I remember literally seeing stars...)
The sixth grader was incredibly nice. He immediately sent some kids to get a teacher and he stayed there cradling my head while apologizing over and over. And when the teacher got there he helped her get me on my feet and walk me to the nurse's office. Along the way he was explaining to the teacher what had happened - that he hadn't seen me lying there - and the teacher said:

"Well, it was his own fault for laying down on the playground!"

I opened my mouth to protest - I was only down there because the fat kid was a klutz - but all I managed to do was cry harder :-) ... Seriously! Why does that happen???
Anyway - they called my mom and she took me to the hospital. There was no fracture but I had a big lump on my forehead for quite a while. I think it was about a month before my face looked completely normal again. (Well, as normal as before.)

Not much else to say about the first grade other than to mention how much my parents argued after the parent/teacher conferences... I think they were fighting over just how much of an idiot I was... At the end of the school year my teacher told them that I had some type of mental deficiency and needed to be in a 'special school'. My dad was OK with that but my mom wasn't so they compromised and sent me to a Catholic school the next year :-) And that will be a future blog entry...