School Daze

God bless little Johnny who's sitting in class today on the first week of school, wishing for his mommy or death. I empathize with him. I remember my own stint in compulsory school too well.

I went to elementary school in one of those prison campuses. Cinder-block walls, concrete floors and a generous ration of getting knifed. We didn't use cigarettes as currency; we simply used currency to buy cigarettes, and more than a few of us became queens in order to survive. (OMIT, please. My parents read.)

One problem with my elementary imprisonment was that I was small and unable to enforce my own self-determination.

I remember being surrounded by third-grade classmates who I swore could produce offspring. Whereas I had dinner at 8, they had puberty at 8. There was even a kid named Charles who sat two rows from me that had a mustache, and a handle-bar one at that, which meant he could not only kick my ass, but could pass as a gentleman in 19th century British India.

Perhaps I'm remembering the details of youth poorly, but what I don't recall in factual particulars, I compensate with absolute emotional accuracy. It was a bad place. I felt alone.

The main thing that made school feel like prison to me was the duration. Every day of second grade felt like five to 10 for B and E. I majored in clock watching, and I simply couldn't wait to get out of there to go play in a creek or reenact Star Wars in makeshift costumes.

I wonder how many other people remember their elementary experience as vividly as I do. I once loved a girl who couldn't recall the names of her first, second and third grade teachers. I don't understand that. I remember all of mine and how they told me I was an "idiot with a disjointed body."

I'll never forget the first time our principal, Mrs. Withers, came on the wooden-framed loudspeaker and announced that school was over in a voice branded with a three-pack-a-day habit. "Have a Marlboro summer," she said, and then it was off to freedom. Paroled, until the infraction of summer fun was punished once more with scholastic incarceration.

I don't miss it. Nothing in my adult life has felt like the grind of the school year.

So hang in there, little Johnny. I still feel your pain.