With the arrival of ‘Back To School’ marketing in the mail and on the television, my mind wanders back to a time when thinking about going to school created happy excitement in my little girl brain. The most memorable had to be entering first grade.
In September 1958, I left home for good, so to speak – I started First Grade at Sippican Elementary School. I don’t remember my teacher’s name, but I vividly remember it as a lovely day resplendent with sunshine and my young Mother holding my hand tightly. She delivered me to the classroom door where she imparted some words to me that made her face look very earnest and a little scared. The words I can’t recall, only her face frozen in time. In the next frame of memory, I’m seated at a desk that fits me just right holding a fat pencil and excited about the box of fat crayons waiting inside the desk. No more just a little kid following my mother from room to room, I was now a student.
Returning home that afternoon, I found Ma was upset with me. Why, I wondered. I hadn’t been home long enough to get into trouble. What I had failed to do was cry. Other little kids had cried, begging their mothers not to leave them. I had simply and joyfully smiled and waved good-bye. Ma apparently was expecting confirmation of my neediness for her. What she failed to appreciate was that her job had been to prepare me for independent living. Poor Ma would continue to lament decades later, “…you were glad to get away from me, you didn’t cry when I left…”
Having turned seven years old the previous January, I was one of the older students in the class but certainly not the smartest. At home, I’d received the most rudimentary thread of education. I knew the alphabet, how to count to fifty, and could spell my name out loud. Writing it would have to be mastered quickly because others already knew how to do this and so much more.
In those years, little girls still rarely wore trousers or slacks. Skirts and dresses dominated the scene as acceptable female attire. I preferred dresses with big fluffy bows in the back that bounced along as I skipped. Unfortunately, those bows were a menace that made sitting difficult. I sat in my first classroom chair very upright and very quiet. Those were also the days when children didn’t speak in class unless called upon, where corporal punishment was anticipated for the smallest infraction of silly rules, and where little girls lined up first in front of little boys.
One thing Ma did teach me was how to sit properly while wearing a dress. It was important to smooth the backside with your hand as you bent into a seated position. Over and over we had practiced at home. She impressed upon me the importance of making sure that my ‘panties’ weren’t seen by little boys. Pressing ones knees tightly together and never crossing ones legs was the rule. I found this difficult when my feet usually didn’t touch the floor when seated.
Politics were deeply entrenched in classrooms across America. These were the days of atomic threat. Remember ‘duck and cover’ procedures? How those survival skills were drummed into our little heads. At least once a month the siren would blast through the building and all the children were instructed to scramble onto the floor, crawl on hands and knees getting under the desk. I, however, was much more concerned that little Tommy might see my panties as I skedaddled for cover. There I was with my right hand straining behind my backside to keep my dress from riding up. I feared exposing innocent eyes to my pink undies. Were we traumatized by all this talk of a bombs falling on our school? I don’t know. I was primarily concerned about my underwear being seen and for that I am forever scarred.
I loved lunchtime. Most of the time, I brought a ‘cold’ lunch from home in a cherished Dale Evans lunchbox. Oh, that smell when the lid was popped open and the scent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on Wonder Bread (wrapped in waxed paper) along side a shiny apple wafted towards my olfactory senses (I learned that in fifth grade science) – ambrosia!
Smells punctuate my memories, including those from the first grade. Clay, paste, crayons, chalk, floor wax, mimeographed papers – this is the pungent past that floats in the air as I write. Oh, and the smell of sick … some little kid was always throwing up. Yuck.
My first first grade teacher is memorable only as a vague image of an unsmiling woman with a passion for rote learning techniques. We recited lessons like good little parrots or else.
Midway through the school year, we moved back to Onset (fluctuating between Marion and Onset denoted various phases in my parent’s marriage). At Onset Elementary School, I was installed with Mrs. Pie. Her very name evoked a pastry shop of goodness. And she was true to her name. Mrs. Pie was lovely in her crisp dresses and professionally coifed hair-do. Tall with gentle eyes and soft demeanor, I could listen to her voice all day and never tire of it as some kids did. One little girl I met in class would become my lifelong friend. We both recall Mrs. Pie like a fresh slice of sweetness served to us during first grade classes.
I was curious what other people remembered from this pivotal jumping off point in one’s life. No matter how old the respondent, nearly everyone had something they could recall about first grade.
Ana told me that she came from a Portuguese-speaking home and that up until the age of four she didn’t speak at all. She was completely dependent on her mother for everything so that entering an English-speaking first grade class was horrible. Speaking only Portuguese (at a time when bi-lingual education was not offered), she was unable to communicate with the teacher or the other students. She begged her mother not to make her go to school. Everything about the experience of being sent to school was difficult, including having to wear homemade clothing. Yet she survived and by second grade had made friends and was plugging away at English, a language that still feels new to her all these years later.
Bev came from a home where educated females were not an anomaly. She was given freedom and access to paper and writing implements, but more importantly, access to information. At home with a mother and grandmother who were both teachers, she received the equivalent of a full board-certified education. Thus, she recalls she was in the eighth grade before a teacher said something that she didn’t already know. Amazing.
Krissie’s experience was one from a Dickens novel. She said and I quote, “My teachers … honestly should not have been allowed near children. I went to Lutheran grade school, and I SWEAR that several of those witches were concentration camp matrons, left overs from WWII.” (LMAO)
Charlotte shared, “Mrs. Phinney was not warm and fuzzy but all right. One day, we had to think of words beginning with the letter ‘H’ and I asked her if we took the ‘C’ off my name would that be a word and she told me NO!” Charlotte would have to wait years to learn why the teacher reacted that strongly.
Anne (she was in Mrs. Pie’s class the year before I was) was thinking about her mother while skipping around the playground picking a handful of dandelions to take home as a surprise. Unfortunately, that was when she learned she was allergic to them and ended up being sent home with swollen eyes and no flowers for mommy. Bummer.
Emily clearly recalls her first grade teacher, Miss Studee, as ‘the year of the wedding planner.’ Studee debriefed the students frequently about her upcoming nuptials with everything from the colors she had selected to the type of cake to the honeymoon venue. Emily was enthralled. When they celebrated the end of the school year, Emily’s class had a pretend wedding reception with the girls wearing tiny wedding veils and the boys donning faux cummerbunds. For Emily, it was a dream come true. Her favorite toys were her Barbie dolls. She regularly married them off to the Kens in her collection.
Sarah said her strongest memory was witnessing a kid’s throwing-up episode that then caused her to reflexively do the same. The teacher was kind and calming as she walked the children to the nurse’s office. I think teachers must have a high level of tolerance for the smell and sight of bodily fluids. (Sarah is planning a career in psychiatry).
Danielle (Sarah’s older sister) shared that she remembers hatching eggs to chicks and how interesting it was to watch the process. (She is heading to URI to study chemistry, then matriculating into other studies with the ultimate goal of becoming a dermatologist).
And last, but not least, from the one male who responded to my dragnet, Paul said that all he remembers other than being surrounded by Nuns (with an equal number falling between the good and evil varieties) was peeing his pants and his older brother being conscripted to take him home posthaste.
For me, first grade was the beginning of seeking, questioning, learning. Today I find myself feeling just as optimistic and excited about the future as I did in 1958. I believe that the best days are waiting to be experienced, yet – I do wish I could feel Ma’s hand tightly holding mine just one more time. I cry now that she’s left.
By Marilou Newell
