I have the routine down pretty well now. I wake up and fall out of bed at two in the afternoon, throw on some sandals, a coat and my hat and brave the outside world just long enough to slip into the Hop. I always buy the same thing, too: cranberry juice and banana bread, more for their ability to combat a hangover than for their taste and more for their convenience than either.
But yesterday was a little different. After getting my food and my mail, I turned the corner and started to leave when I saw it. At first, I thought it was a giant half-human centipede, 50 screaming heads and one hundred legs all coming to get me But then I wiped my bloodshot eyes and realized that it was nothing more than a group of second-graders, holding hands and walking in single file, on their way to visit the museum.
I quickly returned home and, just as quickly, went back to bed. But I couldn't fall asleep. I kept thinking about those kids, and I tried to remember what it was like for me when I was that young.
First of all, my breakfasts were even more convenient than they are now. On Friday nights, my mom would wrap bowls of Donkey Kong cereal in cellophane and when my sisters and I would wake up at 6 a.m. on Saturday to watch cartoons, all we would have to do is pour in the milk.
Reading was a lot more fun back then, too. But that's probably because the books were much shorter and had better pictures. Ironically, the one author banned in my house was Dr. Suess. My mom thought that his books distorted the language so much that it took the point out of learning to read them. She thought that it was more important to learn how to read real words than his nonsensical words. I bet she doesn't believe any of that gobblety-gook anymore.
The great thing about being a second-grader was that there were no consequences. The worst thing you could do wasn't failing a test or getting caught cheating, it was accidentally eating the class goldfish. And if you did eat the goldfish, you could always get out of trouble by telling the teacher that it was "Opposite Day" so what you actually did was the exact opposite of eating the goldfish. But I digress ...
And the classes I took in second grade were the best. They were fun, but in retrospect, there was no need to learn any of that stuff. Like music class where everyone learns to play the recorder. I haven't heard of one person who made it big playing the recorder. Or penmanship class -- I haven't written in cursive since the fourth grade, and I don't think it has hurt me any. Or geography class ... oh wait, my roommate just informed me that he's a geography major. We'll let that one go for now.
I had a good time in second grade, and it looked to me like those kids were having fun too.
But the thing that struck me about those kids was their eyes. They had no fear in their eyes, only awe and amazement. Maybe they didn't know yet about loss, about sickness, disease or death -- why worry about these things when you have a cure-all cootie shot? Maybe they didn't know about loneliness -- after all, isn't that what the Buddy System is for? Maybe they didn't know about expectations -- when you're three feet tall and can still wear sweatpants to school without embarrassment, how much can the world ask of you?
I envy those kids, because they can still have fun without consequence, and the world is still bright and new to them. But I also fear for them because there is so much that they don't know, and the only way to learn it is through pain and suffering. I wanted to go back and wish them all good luck, but the teacher probably would have thought that I was some kind of weirdo and called Safety and Security, so I just walked on by.
