My elementary school. And, yes, my third grade class many moons ago. Can you find me? It shouldn't be as hard as finding Waldo. I'm there with the purple shirt and I wonder one more time what the hell my mother was thinking.
Our teacher is to the far left...no pun intended. Mrs. Popper. I've written about her on this blog before. She was my own real live Laura Petrie. A couple of my classmates and friends to this day, Diane and Cheryl, reconnected with her over lunch several years ago. She's now a community activist living in Manhattan and fighting for the rights of senior citizens.
Indeed, I am not bringing back this photo for the sake of nostalgia. Truly I remember my years at Grimes and then Washington Junior High several blocks away fondly. Many of the folks in this class picture moved on together to the junior high school where we met even more kids from elementary schools all over the south side of Mount Vernon, New York.
It was a happy group. It was a fun time, even if it was "school." We have common bonds that we have to this day. A positive result of the sometimes-annoying Facebook is that we are still connected and, in a virtual way, part of each other's lives.
So, get to the point, Len.
Well, the point is that this school and area of Mount Vernon, New York pretty much had us in the same economic class. Probably lower to medium middle class. My guess is that all of our families didn't have enough pots to piss in.
Yes, we were all equal.
I thought about this portrait last week when America went to battle one more time. An ugly event in Minneapolis and then protests and ultimately damaging uproars everywhere else. Amid all that and looking at a photograph from several decades back, I suddenly realized that all of the kids you see above were trailblazers. We all got along. We were harmonious. We were the pioneers of diversity and inclusion.
We didn't know any different. That was how we grew up.
Last Tuesday after a horrific weekend, many folks on social media used a stark black square as their entry for the day. I did not and that was not due to a lack of support for any cause of the month. I can appreciate why they did so. But, indeed, when you share that kind of statement on social media, are you not preaching to the choir? Do you actually have friends that need to be reminded how to be decent human beings? Because if they exist on your "Friends" list, maybe they shouldn't be there in the first place.
I have friends of all religions, nationalities, genders, sexual orientations, colors, backgrounds and any other category they've recently invented to describe the universe. I expect that they already know that I am a decent person. I certainly know that they are. It's true that I can't imagine what it's like to be in someone else's shoes as much as they can't fathom what it is like to be in mine.
That's the glory of it. We are all individuals. The DNA tests on any TV show with CSI in the title will tell you so. But the trick is that we third graders all learned how to get along very early in life. Indeed, we didn't know any better. Ignorance was truly bliss.
That's the thousand words that the picture above wants to tell.
Ironically, about two weeks prior to America's last awful weekend, I initiated a mini-junior high school reunion on Zoom. It was glorious and funny and a tad wistful. Many conversations that had started years ago were seamlessly continued almost in mid-sentence. We shared memories of teachers we liked and teachers that drove us crazy and one teacher that went crazy in front of us (RIP, Mr. Papps). We thought about folks not with us on the computer and those that should be invited to the next one hopefully in a month or so.
Again, we all just got along. As adults, just as we did as children.
It shouldn't be this hard.
Dinner last night: Beef in orange sauce from First Szechwan Wok.
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