Our Grade School Classmates: The Things That We Share

Unlike me, not everyone stayed in the same school district for all of their grade school years. By that I mean: not everyone spent 12 plus years with the same flock of kids, year after year, watching them grow up before our eyes and ears. It was random.

The fact that we were in the same town and same school with these kids was just a random act, yet, the intimacy between the group was profound. It wasn’t a typical intimacy but it was a definite form of intimacy. Imagine: we shared 12 years, day in and day out, 5 days a week for 9 months of the year with the same kids. We watched them and they watched us as we grappled with an infinite number of “break out” experiences: Learning to interact with peers, speaking in front of our classmates, playing sports in the playground, the pressures of achieving academically, “performing” as a general act of daily life be it doing art in class or sports or music, etc..

It started on day one (5 yrs. old) as our parents brought us, likely holding our hands, as we converged with the other kids who were also leaving their homes for the first time to spend large chunks of their days in close contact with other kids. We put our “wheels” on those “tracks” and we would not take them off for 12 years. Yes, for some of us these would be our “comrades” for a dozen years….1st grade, 1st day of junior high, 1st day of high school, and all the days in between. It’s possible that, except for our own spouses or parents, we would spend more total time with that group of kids than any other people in our lives. We grew to know some of these kids well, or very well, (our friends, or bff's) but what about those kids who weren’t our “friends” but the ones whom we still saw day after day, year after year. We would see them out of the corner of our eye eating a sandwich at lunch. We would observe him or her as they spoke up in class or played on the field during recess. We might be assigned by a teacher to work together on a school project. We met them at age (5 or 6) and every year after that we knew we were going to be with them (shoulder to shoulder) until we were 17 or 18. “Tommy, can I borrow an eraser.”
We were discovering our identity at the same time that they were discovering theirs. It’s so powerful and tender in a poetic kind of way. You are theirs and they are yours (the class of). We will never be able to re-create the naivete and “wonder” and lack of security that we experienced in those years. Certainly the years following grade school promised uncertainties but not tightly bunched, as they were, with a group of 30, 50, 80 or more other kids that are all starting at the same starting line and finishing at the same one. It’s the beginning. We barely knew our own names. We all believed in Santa Claus (together) at one time. We were all measured by the same standards. We grew up under the same soundtracks and surrounded by the cultural and political gravities of those times. If you were a boy we all were introduced to jock straps at the same time. We ate in a cafeteria together ….without our parents.

As the years go on we will all have a chance to select our own specific types of elective activities: choir, art, band, yearbook club, school plays, after school sports, Woodshop, etc., but we all started at zero. It’s the only time in our lives when we are, de facto, all equals. In school we are in the same “water” with the tall, the short, the rich, the poor, the loud, the quiet, and all the other stuff. Later life will allow us to cast off all those whom we don’t choose. Our later life will allow us to be with our own self selected group. We will be able to avoid those whom we don’t choose--not so in the grade school years. We will have to be with Johnny, or Kristen, or Paul, or Jan, or Celeste, and watch them as they try to navigate explaining their science project in 4th grade, or when they bring a hamster to school for "show and tell". We will know how they dress, how they comb their hair, and even how they smell. We will know if they are shy, or athletic, or leaders, serious students, “dopers”, nerdie, disruptive, etc.. Based on the first letter of our last name we would likely be next to the same couple of kids in line for every assembly, or roll call, or graduation ceremony. We may not even say more than a few perfunctory words to many (or most) of these kids but these were our comrades during the “wonder” years. They were (our) classmates. We took them for granted. We shared a sacred Alma mater. We shared an incredible amount of life with them; life that was all new and fresh and awkward, at a time like no other: Priceless.

We were always looking up (together) at life: (at) the older kids, the teachers, the coaches. We shared that position together: the bottom. We saw some of them cry, or laugh, or get punished for failing to turn in their homework. We saw them dance at the school dances. Later we saw them score touchdowns or play “Annie” in the school play, or kiss their girlfriend in front of the school lockers. Those classmates of ours started to differentiate themselves as the years went by…..we all started to gain our identities. We were just small kids carrying lunch pales and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and now we are giving a speech about Frederick Douglas in front of the class in 8th grade.

We started noticing the girls (or boys) somewhere near our 5th or 6th grade. We started seeing them differently. A tension was in our life by the 8th or 9th grade that we had never experienced before. Our minds would never be so un-tethered again.

After that last day, that graduation day where we walked forward to grab our diploma at the sound of our name---our relationship with all but a few of those classmates would end abruptly. Or, maybe the better way to say it is that our exposure to those classmates would end, our common ground, our common time. We would no longer share the same physical school ground as we had for 12 years. We may never see or hear from most of them ever again.

On that graduation day we might hear the name of some of our classmates from 1st grade at our high school graduation: “Ron Fremont”! We said only a few words to Ron in 12 years but we knew where he would be every day, every year, and that he liked to wear plaid shirts and black converse shoes and that he was the only 6th grader who collected hockey cards. You made it Ron!, or “Sara Patrick”, or “Pat Wilde”. Where are they now? Who has been watching (and living adjacent to) them ever since our compulsory paths came to an end. They are special. We didn’t choose each other in the same way that soldiers in the same battalion don’t choose each other. But, we are tied to one another. It’s a form of arranged marriage.

We will have many other friends and acquaintances in our lives. We will have very close relationships. But, those kids with whom we spent the “wonder” years will always be insiders. They knew us (then). It may not have been our favorite self and it may not even be a time in our life that we remember fondly but those classmates were there with us through all of it…..from day one to senior prom.

One of the aspects of life that makes it most livable is knowing that we share things with others. It’s very human to want to feel a connection with others. To this day I feel a special kinship with people who like pastrami, or who were huge fans of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, or Broadway theatre, or who like the Dodgers, etc… Our lives are often grounded with others based on the things we share. It’s what brings us together in some way, great or small.

For those grade school classmates whom I never saw after high school ……you will never grow old. You will always be the same age you were on that last day we saw one another.

We shared it all together.

Food for thought....