School's out!

School vacation officially began today at 11 :42 am. Do you remember what the last day of school was like during your elementary years?

We’d clean our desks with that stinky spray and brown paper towels. The boys (and some girls) who had written on their desks with pencil had to scrub extra hard. The teacher would walk around and inspect everyone’s desk. Some of those boys had to re-wash their desks until they literally shined and I wonder today if the teachers weren’t exacting some kind of revenge when that happened! All the posters were taken down from the walls; garbage cans were filled with the junk that accumulates at the bottom of the desk, erasers, crumpled papers, barrettes, dirt.

We’d hand in all the text books, making sure to erase any blatant marks or notes in the margins. Back in the day schools supplied our text books unlike at my kids’ school where we have to pay for them. Funny though, at the end of the year, they don’t come home with a pile of textbooks. I wonder what happens to all those books because come September, everyone has to pay for new ones all over again.

The last day of school was always a half day and by noon when the final bell rang, we were all hot and eager to get out into the sunshine. It was always sunny on the last day of school. When the bell rang, we’d always yell and clap and race to get a good seat on the bus.

Here’s to remembering looking forward to long, lazy days of bike rides, swimming in the lake, eating popsicles, playing in the woods, getting dirty...