About a thousand days … 998 if you want an exact number.
That’s all it took my parents to create three children.
Takes me longer to break in a new pair of sneakers.
Mom and Dad were 38 years old when they got married, an astonishingly advanced age for the Baby Boom era, but they must have known what they were doing. Having three kids in just over three years illustrates how eager they were to start a family.
I was never going to be an only child, which was probably for the best, seeing as how I needed to learn to share and to play well with others, something I recall seeing on more than one report card.
Sometimes, I’ll pull out a family album and look at the photographs from the only Christmas when I had it all to myself.
There’s something melancholy, almost heartbreaking, seeing my 9-month-old self positively surrounded by stuffed animals and toys, boxes and wrapping paper strewn about, with me looking at the camera as if to ask, “It’s not going to stay this way, is it?”
My sister would join the family five months later, and in the fall of the following year, we became a five-person suburban nuclear unit.
By all accounts my sister and brother were nearly inseparable as they grew up, going so far as to create an imaginary marriage. They called themselves Mary and Tom, and when I was invited to play along with the harmless charade, I was Mean Uncle Jim.
Funny how you remember those things.
In the course of time, I started kindergarten, the one to break new ground, a pattern that would be repeated year after year after year.
I don’t remember much about that first day of school, though I seem to recall “nap time,” which felt to me a bit incongruous.
It was very difficult for me to lower my head to the desktop and go to sleep, something none of the others found at all strange.
Two other things stand out: The school was located right across the street, meaning I could walk by myself, and they offered chocolate milk for lunch. This was something pretty great since Mom would sooner vote for a Republican than have that beverage in her house.
Kool-Aid? Sure, but chocolate milk was like eating meat on Fridays, absolutely forbidden, since it caused cavities.
Then it was on to Catholic grade school, which, I’ll admit, wasn’t for everyone. For one thing, you had to go to Mass every morning before classes began, which meant a longer school day than most.
And then there were the rules. The Ten Commandments weren’t nearly enough for the nuns and lay teachers, who delighted in lengthening the list of do's and don’ts to an almost ridiculous extent.
How to properly organize your desk … how to stand and greet the teacher when he or she walked into the classroom … how many sips at the water fountain you were allowed … the proper way to ask to use the lavatory, which was never to be called a “bathroom.”
On the other hand, however, we were taught the most beautiful penmanship, using fountain pens with ink cartridges, creating book reports and other essays on the finest paper, sunny yellow and verdant green and, my favorite, a shade of blue that made the sky blush. It was essential, obviously, to write flawlessly because making mistakes would require the use of a correcting fluid called “whiteout,” which was doled out by the nuns with an eyedropper.
Perfection was the goal in grade school, and although it was nearly impossible to consistently attain, we learned early on that the only way to even approach it was to do your best … every single time.
Something strange happened in summer 1969, well aside from the moon landing, Woodstock, the Manson Murders and Chappaquiddick. The parochial powers that be decided, with very little warning, that come fall, the seventh and eighth grades would be lopped off, discontinued, eliminated forever and ever, Amen.
This lightning bolt of news caused something of a kafuffle in the Dewey household, where only I’d been getting prepared to leave the cocoon of Catholic education for the public school pool.
You’ll remember that earlier in this little epistle, I described how Mom had three kids in three years — wham, bam, thank you ma’am.
Well, basic math will tell you that if I was heading to ninth grade, my sister was bound for eighth and my brother to seventh, neither of which would exist in the place they’d expected to be enrolled.
“The Catholics are coming!” I imagined the headline in the town’s newspaper would read, alarming a mostly Protestant population.
But I needn’t have worried.
A three-times the normal influx of school-age papists didn’t seem to bother anyone at the junior high, a sprawling three-story brick edifice with up and down staircases, lockers lining both sides of the hallways, two gymnasiums, a fine theater, a large library and a cavernous cafeteria, where chocolate milk was always available.
Suddenly, no more uniforms, opening the world of paisley prints and bell-bottoms and longer hair and shorter skirts … pretty cool.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where all religions are welcome and the music is
good.
