Back to School

When you're in school, maybe you don't think it's so cool, but looking back on it now I really miss it. I miss having a desktop that opened by lifting, not double-clicking. I miss doing assignments on that desk, trying to find a smooth spot to write on. I miss the little one-inch tray along the front of the inside where I'd put my pencils and pens and a crayon or two, maybe a found penny or random paperclip. Sometimes even a little stash of cinnamon toothpicks carefully packaged in saran wrap until they were deemed contraband and confiscated by a frowning teacher's aid. Too hot for us kids, I guess. I miss marbles. I used to have a shit ton of marbles. I didn't call them that then. But I'm older now and the way I describe quantities has changed significantly. Not to mention substantially. I could also use butt load. But everybody knows a shit ton is more than a butt load, especially since I had a butt load of steelies alone. Steelies were silver marbles made out of what I presumed to be steel, but it could have been any combination of metals. All that mattered was they were heavier than your average marble and could crack a cat's eye or a boulder pretty easily in one shot. I kept all my marbles in a purple velvet bag with a yellow cord. This bag used to hold liquor. My grandma gave it to me. Or, I found it around the house. I have lost a shit ton of memory since those days. Probably due to my own purple bags of alcohol. But I do remember one thing: I was awesome at marbles. You might say, how convenient. You remember yourself being good at it, but what if you are just suppressing all the times you lost to Scottie or Maureen or that kid from the assembly about drugs who had hairy arms? Even though I've lost a lot of them since, I can guarantee you I had all the marbles then. And how you come by marbles, people, is through victory. When you hit someone else's marble, you take it. I hit a lot of marbles. And if I have to play the Susie Falaska card, I will. Susie Falaska was my best friend in grade school and I'm fairly certain we had detailed conversations and made notes of our marble conquests. That's another thing I miss about school. All those hours wiled away with so many friends on subjects ranging from who’s the best at bombardo to pumping the swings hard enough to lift the poles off the ground. I was out with my friends in the present the other night and Leslie said something about an adult kickball league. I was immediately interested. I have been trying desperately to remember the last play I ever made in kickball but I know I never will because hey, who knew at the time it would be my last? Was it a spectacular catch of a smash line drive? Was it a diving stop and subsequent throw-out of some poor wimp caught between 2^nd and 3^rd? Or was it less than stellar…maybe I tripped over myself trying to kick one out of the park and instead dribbled it back to the pitcher for an easy out to end the game? How embarrassing. An opportunity to erase that one among total strangers who want the same level of redemption must be seized. Surely kickball on a Saturday afternoon beats four hours of chasing a much smaller, much harder, much more dimply white ball in and of the woods with sticks better suited for mole-whacking? Anything that reminds me of school gives me pause these days. I know there are lots of different schools, different ages, different phases in life when you’re actually in school, but when I say school I mean before junior high (when you get all pimply) and well before high school (when you feel oppressed by the man). I miss grade school. I really enjoyed the simplicity of that age. The appreciation for inventiveness, creativity and doing something no one else had ever done in quite that way. I remember starting a newsletter in 5^th grade. It was a one-pager that I ran off on the ditto machine in the principal’s office. The ink was very purple and so was I after every deadline. I’ll never forget the smell of that ink and my own thumbprints in the margins as I passed out the latest edition. I hand wrote all the articles in columns and drew cartoons for the pictures. I remember finishing my first (and last) novel that same year on that same ditto machine: “Devil Shark Island,” a PG-13 tale of an incredible escape from some very mean sharks. I remember coveting things out of GRIT Magazine, so much so that I became a salesperson of said magazine. I remember teaming up with classmates to write a commercial for a brand new toothpaste. We even sang a jingle. I remember doing a slide presentation on safari animals. I brought in my parents’ projector and everything. I was very into A/V and it makes me smile to think how far we’ve come just in my lifetime. If I’d had a laptop and Power Point as a kid…well, maybe I’d have become bored with it, too. My Dad recently showed me a picture I remember from way back when, before I think I was even in school, of me and my sister playing with our favorite toys. Hers was something Barbie, mine was called “Future Phone.” It said “Future Phone” really big in computer-y letters on the box. And of course, I’m on the phone. Calling the future. If I was talking to me, I wish I would have told myself to repeat everything that happens to me over and over again in my head so I will always remember it. Or, a wrong number might have been nice…I could still be there.