The Last Days by Debbie Mascot
Today is the last day of school for kids in our area. For those of us without kids, on the surface our thoughts are: "Darn it! Stupid kids all over the darn place for the next few months." But if we take the time to remember...
I remember a particular last day of school. It was the end of eighth grade. Now, I moved around a lot, but these kids didn't. I'd lived in Portola Valley from nursery school through third grade. Then we'd moved away until partway through sixth grade. When I moved back, I still knew a bunch of the kids. And I still do. In fact, I went to a baby shower last weekend for my best friend from third grade. She's in this memory of the last day of school.
The last day of school was a feeling that cannot be duplicated in adulthood. Nothing is so freeing and so exhilarating as the last day of school. Classes don't matter. Teachers can't wait to be rid of you. The energy level is at a peak that it's never been before. And then the last bell rings.
And you leave the classroom and you have three months of nothing ahead. Three months of hedonism. Three months of joy. Three months of "Mom, I'm bored..." but not taking any of her suggestions to clean your room. Three months of unadulterated kid-ness.
This particular last day of school was the end of our time together, though. All those kids that hadn't been apart from one another since meeting in nursery school were going to different high schools. Some were going to a school in the neighboring towns, others to private schools or boarding schools. But the point remained that this was the end for most of us. Or the beginning. Whatever.
We'd had our graduation ceremony the previous Friday and the Graduation Dance (complete with casino stuff- I won a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi!) so when that final bell rang. It was done. Over.
Kris and I (the friend mentioned before) left school with the biggest smiles EVER. We'd just found out that she was going to be able to go to the same high school as I was going to, so we were ecstatic and didn't have to temper it with sadness. We were walking and giggling and trying to whistle really loudly like Dad did with his fingers in his mouth. We couldn't, but we did find out that we could scream really loudly and really high-pitched and it would come out like a whistle. We walked and walked through our country town way past all the places that would take us to her house or to mine. We walked down the main road laughing and "whistling" until we got to the next town. Then we turned around and laughed all the way back.
No school, no responsibilities, nothing to do. A wonderful feeling.
Another great one for me was, surprisingly, the first day of school. A brand new beginning. New things to learn, new clean slate to start with. No preconceived notions about Debbie or what she was capable of doing with her life. Just another face in the crowd that got to prove herself through the next year.
New jobs have that, too, sometimes, but it's just not the same.