THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

This week marks the end of the school year here in Jawjuh. It’s a strange time, so close to the last school day of the year, to be thinking about the first day of school...which makes me strange, I suppose.

The first day of school is one of those Watershed Events.

Before you get on the Academic Treadmill, life is pretty uncomplicated. You get up, you eat, you play, you take a nap, you take a crap, you eat some more...nothing too demanding. But then, one day, the Powers That Be bundle you off to a strange new place - a place where, in one form or another, you are expected to spend the next 13-17 (or more) years of your life. From then on, you will be Punching the Timeclock, whether it’s in the world of school or in the Corporate Salt Mines to which so many of us exile ourselves.

My first day of school was back in the fall of 1957. It was September: my fifth birthday, the day Sputnik was launched, was still a month in the future. And for me, it was time to enter the strange new world of kindergarten.

Adventure Number One was riding the school bus, which picked up a small mob of snot-nosed tykes, myself included, perhaps half a block from my house. In the bus, we were transported all the way across town to the Raymond J. Lockhart School. It was my only year attending school in that particular building: for some strange reason, the much closer Unqua School, where I would attend Grades 1-5, did not offer kindergarten. As it was, the district’s resources were stretched thin enough in those baby-boom years such that we had split-session kindergarten. This meant I was on the hook for only half a day that first year.

I don’t remember a lot of details from that first day, but the few I do remember stand out clearly in my memory even today, almost fifty years later. And all of them seem to revolve around Stupid Shit.

I remember being yanked into the wrong classroom by a girl who must have wanted me to be in her class...but the teachers managed to sort out that potential snafu fairly quickly.

I remember lunch-hour recess on the playground, where I managed to fall onto an outcropping of rough, unfinished concrete, making a bloody mess of my thumb. I’m sure I made a screaming nuisance of myself.

But the biggest Near-Snafu of the Day came when it was time to board the bus for home.

There were two buses: one that would take kids to the eastern and southern reaches of town, and another for the north and west. In their wisdom, the school administrators named the buses, ostensibly to help the kids remember which one was theirs. One bus was the Mickey Mouse bus, the other the Donald Duck bus.

I was supposed to ride the Donald Duck bus.

When the time came for us to get on the buses to head for home, almost all of the little friends I had made that day ran straight for the Mickey Mouse Bus. Well, that was the bus I wanted to ride, too. Not only were my friends on that bus, but everyone knew Mickey Mouse was cool and that Donald Duck was a hot-tempered asshole. Screw Donald Duck, I thought, I’m ridin’ with Mickey!

[Editor’s Note: No, I didn’t really think in terms such as “screw” and “asshole.” But I knew what I liked, and I knew what I didn’t like.]

But before the bus could leave, I was unceremoniously hustled off Mickey and shuffled onto a seat on the Donald Duck bus. And a good thing, too, because at the tender age of four, I would have been a complete basket case without an Elissonian Parent being right there to meet me at the bus stop. I was oblivious to this at the time, of course, but I was thoroughly embarrassed at having been made to change buses. Yes, even at the tender age of four, I could feel the emotion that She Who Must Be Obeyed would eventually refer to as “Fu-Na.”

“How did they know?” you are probably asking yourself. How did they know little Elisson (and only little Elisson, I might point out) was on the wrong damn bus?

Simple. It was the color-coded cardboard tag affixed to every child’s clothing. The Mickey people had a hot Pepto-Bismol pink, while we Donalders had a dark, loathsome green...which was the other thing I hated about the Donald Duck bus. My green tag stuck out like a sore thumb on the wrong bus - and I was thus prevented from wandering off to the wrong side of town, there to be sold into eternal servitude cleaning the grease traps at the yet-to-be-constructed All-American Burger stand.

But that, Esteemed Readers, is another story for another time.