Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Old high-school chums / Elementary school

10/10/09: Another day at the beach. I'd like to note a couple of folks who I was able to reconnect with, if only briefly in some cases. There are some special recollections that to keep here. There's a fellow by the name of Ron, whom I referred to in an earlier post as a motivational speaker who's mother belongs to the Appalachian Mountain Club, and who had hiked with someone I'd happened to have dinner with at an AMC lodge in New Hampshire, earlier in my roadtrip. Ron is one of the people at the reunion I went to elementary school with. When we met at the reunion he immediately referred to posts commenting, "I just love your blog!". Several of were thinking back to our 2nd grade teachers, and that the boys all had crushes on the one teacher back then, Miss Siebert. Each week Miss Siebert gave a student a word, a seldom used word that a second grader wouldn't likely be familiar with. The word would remain in "jail" in a paper "cell" on the classroom wall. At the end of the week, the student would have to give the definition of the word to the rest of the class for the word to be released from jail. The word would then be taped to the front of the student's desk. Possibly not surprisingly, we each remembered our words from some 46 years gone by. What fun we had remembering the childhood days. Jonathan, Peggy, John, Ed, and several others were all from the same elementary school. Those were the days of competing by flipping baseball cards against the school wall. The card closest to the wall took the other players' card. Elemenatary school began the boy - girl playground games also. The shoe game was a big one. That one involved a boy stealing the shoe of another boy, and giving it to the girl thought to be the object of the boy's affection. If the girl felt a mutual affection, she would run with the shoe, chased by the boy with one shoe. A whole gang of boys and girls would fly across the grassy playground field and fall on the ground, the result usually being some kind physical contact between the boy and the girl. This game could get complex, as innocent as it was. I remember it being a bit dramatic for me at least.

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