What I did or may have done in my elementary school days has vanished except for a few particles glimpsed in the mists of a fading memory seventy years afterwards. The causes for their disappearances vary. Mere aging and its accompanying forgetfulness are, no doubt, major ones. My confusion on exactly when they were created may also be a result of those years in strangely split classes. I no longer recall if something happened in the third, fourth, or fifth grade. Was the action accomplished under the watchful eye of Miss Dunlap, Mrs. Davis, Miss Scully or Mrs. Sullivan?
Only particles remain, like floating dust motes in bright sunshine. Perhaps elementary school memories may also seem like the boxes of the Periodic Chart of physical elements. Memories can be collected and organized in their own boxes.
Within one box I see two sheets of paper, each bearing a drawing. One sheet has four adjoining squares making up a single block. Each area is colored with a different crayon. Elemental red, green, blue and yellow. The images are large; the crayon has been deposited in a variety of directions. The red goes both up and down, and side-to-side. Also, diagonally. Part of a colored box may be light; other parts have heavy deposits of color. The only requirement had been to stay within the lines of each block. I had; I did not just “scribble”: I got an A+ for my work – not only for art, but also, for following instructions. My mother saved the paper for many years. It has now vanished.
The second sheet of paper displays a tree, actually two trees with bushy curvatures of green leaves and well-formed branches. The tree on the left is printed with the purple lines of a ditto machine. The reproduction on the right is drawn with a pencil. Each student had to make a freehand copy of the ditto-tree and color both of them with crayons. My teacher, probably Miss Dunlap in the first grade, criticized me. She accused me of tracing the tree instead of redrawing it. On close examination, it’s observable that there are slight differences in the two structures. My hand-to-eye coordination was judged to be exemplary. Again, I got an A+. I’m not sure how long my mother kept these examples of my early accomplishments or where, along the way, I discarded them.
The only other academic activity I recall is learning how to write. Hand-to-eye coordination was also helpful when letters must be formed between two parallel lines or placed so part of the letter goes below the bottom line. For comfort with cursive, there was the reproduction of rows of o’s – either overlapping or sitting side-by-side. This exercise may no longer be used. My grandchildren seldom use cursive; any manually produced writing uses block letters. By the end of the next decade, it will be unlikely that anyone under the age of thirty will be able to read correspondence kept from my own adolescence.
In a short time, the source of all to be read will be electronic. On the other hand, I have a strong memory of a classroom reading table. We stood around it when we learned how to read, so it must have been in the first or second grade. The one I especially remember was light green. It was not flat, but shaped like a long tent. Our books could be propped on it as we attempted to read from them.
I also recall this table for a personal disaster as well as for its intended use. Almost all members of the class had to go individually to the Nurse’s Office for some kind of vaccination. I had already received mine before starting the schoolyear and remained in the classroom. However, as the students returned to the room and continued their lesson at the reading table, the odor of the alcohol, which had been used to sterilize the injection sites on their arms, increased dramatically. The fumes finally reached a level resulting in my passing out and hitting my head on the reading table before I ended up on the classroom floor. I’ve disliked and tried to avoid shots, ever since. Not all elementary particles are recalled with pleasure.