Let's Talk About Se...

Second grade.

What?  What were you thinking?

Last night I dreamt I was in second grade.  I wasn't a 4-foot-nothing second grader, I was a full-on Robin Williams in Jack second grader.  I wasn't the only one.  There were other adult-size second graders in there, and there were some normal-size second graders.  Whatever normal is...

My dream was pretty basic.  It was about one of my favorite things that happened in Elementary School: Movie Time.  Seriously:

When you walked into a room and saw that, you knew you were about to have the best 75 minutes of your week, or month, or however often teachers let us sit on the floor "Indian style" and watch a movie.  If I were a teacher, we would have done this every day - twice a day.  It was the only time you could get all of us kids to shut up.  By the way, "Indian style?" Really?  Now we say cross-legged.

Anyways, this dream made me realize how awesome Elementary School was/is.  I'd go back. In Elementary School, everyone was best friends.  Maybe not everyone, there's always a random but that kid is usually the Minkus from Boy Meets World.  You can be too knowledgeable.

Seriously, we were all best friends, our moms packed our lunches and every Friday was Pizza Friday.  $2 Mexican pizzas - FTW!

The only worries we had were picking out the right Valentine's Day cards, learning how to write a cursive "z" (that's still hard), and being able to do a pull-up or climb the rope during your fitness "test" in P.E.

(Note: I could never do a pull-up and would just hang onto the bottom of the rope.  Seventeen years later, my upper-body strength hasn't changed a bit.)


I miss Elementary School.  I don't know if all Elementary Schools are the same, but Mt. Vernon Elementary had it going on and this is why I want to go back:

Warm-Up For Reading
Did everyone do this?  If not, I suggest you go back to your Elementary School and demand Warm-Up For Reading.  It was the best way to read.  You got to come to school in your pajamas, and if you had footed-pajamas - bonus points.  We got to bring our pillows, stuffed animals, snacks, you name it.  It was a Forever Lazy free for all and it was epic.  Sometimes, the teacher would bring breakfast.  I think this only happened once a year.  It should happen every six weeks.  We would lay around and read.  All day.

Panorama
I don't think Panorama happened until 3rd grade, and for us MV kids 3rd grade was the end of the greatness that is Elementary School.  Intermediate came next.  Anyways, Panorama was a whirl-wind.  I believe it happened for a week, maybe an entire six weeks, I don't know. It was so out of the box that I can't remember.  Panorama was taking one class and putting it into another.  It blew my mind.  I would go to school, wanting to be in Ms. Menefee's class, but no, I couldn't be in my normal class.  I had to be in Mrs. Flora's class, or whatever her name is, I don't remember because if she wasn't Ms. Menefee, I didn't want anything to do with it.

Parachute Day
You know what I'm talking about.  That day in P.E. It usually happened on a Friday.  A fantastic way to close out a tough week of addition, subtraction and reading.  You would go to P.E., get a little crazy on some scooters, play with some streamers, you might have even shot some hoops, who knows.  But in the last 15 minutes, this happened:

And time stood still.

Airplane Day
This only happened in Kindergarten, and it was by far the best day of my life.  When I went to first grade and we didn't have Airplane Day, I was beyond disappointed.  This only happened once.  The teachers lined each side of the Kindergarten hallway with chairs facing the Kindergarten hall entrance door.  So what happened?  We sat in those chairs and took a plane ride.  There was a captain, flight attendants and peanuts!  That was the first time I had ever been on a plane.  I'm still pretty pissed that I didn't get chosen as a flight attendant.  I'm pretty sure it was due to discrimination against redheads.  Or because I didn't want to share peanuts.

Shaving Cream
I assume everyone got to do this.  At the end of the week, the teacher would bust out cans of Barbasol, spray a bit onto your desk and then you would go to town!  Spread the shaving cream everywhere!  What a terrible idea.  It's a way to get desks clean, but then you have shaving cream covered munchkins.  We would spread out shaving cream and write notes, draw pictures, discover the equation for the speed for time, and so on.

Recess
Recess was maybe 30 minutes long.  At recess, you could be whatever you wanted.  Power Ranger?  You got it.  Unicorn?  It happened.  Gymnast?  Sure, just ask for supervision.  The boys would play football, the girls would watch.  If there was a tire involved, you know it was fun.  What was that about?  At Mt. Vernon, we had tractor tires halfway in the ground and we would play on them.  There was also a tree covered in tires and we would play on that too.  Jungle gym?  Bump that, we've got tires!  We did have a HUGE jungle gym at the very back of the playground.  It was torn down after too many kids kept being reckless and falling and breaking bones and stuff.  Just ruin it for everyone else why don't you...

I believe that if recess had continued on through high school, the drop out rate would be significantly lower.

What were your favorite things about Elementary School?  We all have some!