Freedom

I spent six years in the old Broadway School. Most of that time I lived on Lyttle Boulevard. Every morning I left the house at 7:30 walking across the old wooden bridge and up the hill to the school. It didn't matter if it was raining or snowing or freezing we always had to be inside the front door before the bell rang at 8:00am. You didn't dare be "tardy". That would be a fate worse than death. If you wore a coat you hung it up in the "cloak room". I never really knew why it was called a cloak room and didn't ask.

Most of my teachers were old and old fashioned with their long dowdy dresses and their high top button shoes. Always walking around the halls with their noses in the air trying to look proper. I always thought they would cringe with disbelief when they saw me coming or going. Me with the overalls, marbles in the pockets and chewing bubblegum with an occasional bubble sticking to my nose. A total disregard of protocol of any kind. How many times did Miss Harris demand I open my mouth so she could look all the way down my throat for candy or gum or remind me that I didn't wash behind my ears or cautioned me from pulling Rita Fay's pigtails. The most vile word in her vocabulary was that disgusting "homework". Would I ever, in my life, be able to breathe freely again without that terrible burden I had to bear five days a week. Lois Faye apparently liked homework. She carried all her books home every day. I decided it was people like her that made it tough on the rest of us. My hands were never clean enough for miss Mobely and she didn't like it when I wiped my runny nose on my shirt sleeve. But my just reward always came when that bell sounded at 3:15. Freedom! Isn't that what we all strived for? How many more weeks to Summer Vacation...