I haven't been able to get this posted to my paper's web site yet. I'll add a link later.

Little column about revisiting my old elementary school.


There’s a small black ledge that runs along a hallway in front of the principal’s office in Constable School, and I remember how my hand used to make a swishing noise as I ran it along its cool, hard surface
.
I don’t know why, but it was a source of comfort to me.
Something I just liked to do. And I did it nearly every time my class filed by.

But, when I moved on to the upper grades, fourth through sixth, I didn’t get to walk through that hall anymore. I was on the other side of the school, and I remember thinking that things had changed. I was growing up. The kids were bigger, the lessons were harder, and the teachers were scarier. And, I wouldn’t be able to slide my hand along that ledge any more. I missed it.

That was about 20 years ago, and that ledge is still here. So is the office, and a few classrooms and doorways that I remember. I visited the school for the first time in years on Sept. 11 and got to see everything, both new and old, firsthand.

I hadn’t thought about that ledge in a long time. In fact, I hadn’t thought about a lot of things in a long time. But as I toured the school with Principal Rich Chromey, things started to come back, although it was difficult to place my 10-year-old self in today’s version of the school.

Constable has grown considerably since I left, with additions in 1989 and 2006 (the first, in fact, was dedicated to my brother, Christopher, who died of leukemia in 1987 while a student there). It has overtaken blacktop playgrounds that oversaw hours of kickball and tag and rope jumping, overwhelmed a baseball field and now nearly reaches a creek in the back, an unthinkable possibility when I was a kid.

The classrooms, even the old ones that I attended, are “new.” They’ve got carpet and new clean walls and nice shiny things that stand out when placed against my memories of tiled floors and cinderblock walls and hot steamy days without air conditioning.

I remember lining up for lunch and school assemblies outside the auditorium/gymnasium. We were giddy about what was going to happen next — food, recess, songs, plays. No longer. That’s now the library, and the once-enormous room looks a lot smaller now that I’m taller.

When I attended, one of the rights of passage for Constable School students happened in the fourth grade. Our library back then took up four classrooms that had been converted into an open space. The area was still relatively new then, having just moved from what is now the teachers’ room and later the small gym. Anyway, in one corner was a wooden loft. A group of students had made it before the walls of their class were torn down. It nearly reached the ceiling and, if filled with students, could probably fit about 20 (at least it seems like that now). Underneath it, the librarian would read stories to younger kids or show films while us big kids would climb up and down with books in hand. It was awesome.

The loft’s gone now, of course, and frankly I can’t believe they let us do it. But back then we were allowed to do a lot of things you can’t do now, including walking home for lunch, which I probably did more times than not, considering I lived just around the block.

I also remembered the things we weren’t allowed to do but sometimes did anyway, like nearly climbing to the roof of the school and shooting peas in the lunch room (I cried when I got caught).

As I marched through the school, I tried hard to care about the new things, the gym, and the big rooms, and the recessed sections of hallway for teacher bulletin boards. But, nothing was as interesting to me as seeing the parts of the school that I already knew. The classrooms I loved and the ones I dreaded. The playground where getting picked last for kickball made for more than a few miserable lunchtimes. The loft. The music and art rooms. The monkey bars near where I had my first fight. I remembered my first day of kindergarten and could almost smell the perfume my teacher wore as I walked passed my old room. And of course, I remembered that little black ledge.

And I’m still not sure why liked it. I just did.

That was very touching. Well done. Invoked many images back to my grade school

Thanks.

Very nice, John! It's a great piece of plain-spoken and yet evocative writing.

Thanks. I've been so busy at work that I actually had to write it almost two weeks after my visit. I think I like it too. The school felt very comfortable to me when I went. Like a comfy blanket.

J