Yep, I Finally Went Inside

A long time ago, just a city away, I attended elementary school. It's no longer a school. It was turned into Murray City Hall many, many, many years ago. A few years after that, the police also moved in to make it their station. But I drive past it very often, doing all kinds of grown up errands. For a long time now, I have thought that I wanted to go inside and see how the building compares with the memories I have. The building is getting older and rumors abound about tearing it down, so the urgency has been building. There is something about knowing that your elementary school may be torn down that makes one feel really, really old.

Arlington was a great elementary school to attend. It was old even when I went. I believe that at one time it was the high school for Murray. It is a huge, imposing building with large windows, window made for day-dreaming school children. The building is two stories high, with one long hall down the middle, no wings growing out of the main hall. We were never, never allowed to run down those halls and the imposing principal made sure we did not. I can still see him, a big bald man standing post with his hands ominously clasped behind his back. Only the bravest disobeyed him. I remember the bathrooms with their old fixtures and black and white tile floors, so different from today's sanitized restrooms with no personality.

I was at lunch one day in the opposite part of the valley where I work. It was a nice day and I wasn't anxious to get back. As I was driving past I thought, "This is it. Today is the day!" I parked in the back with all of the cop cars. It was so odd to walk in the same back door that I had run out of as a child anxious to get to recess. I almost felt as if I were trespassing, even though it's public property.

The interior is so changed. Naturally. 40 years will do that. Yet, I could see that school in my minds eye just as it was so many years ago. I entered the long halls stepping on the vinyl floors now covered in carpet. I tentatively passed the principal and nurse's offices where I got help after being stung by a bee in the first grade. Do they even have school nurses now? If they do, I know they are not dressed in crisp white uniforms, topped off with a smart hat.

I didn't go upstairs figuring that it would look similar to the ground floor. But I remembered the old lunch room up there that was turned into a library later on.

Going outside, I pictured the janitor's house that adjoined the school yard back then. The Murray Post Office is there now. I could envision the playground with monkey bars and tether ball poles. All the girls used to wear shorts under their dresses so they could hang upside down without flashing their underwear. I loved playing hopscotch the very best. I could picture myself, a little brown-eyed girl with ears that stuck out, being chased as a first grader by Fred and Danny. I still have some scars on my knees from tripping over that asphalt.

As I crossed the parking lot to go back to my van, I saw the windows of the room where I learned to read. The huge, large window panes have been replaced with newer, efficient double paned glass. Through the window, I could see the little girl who tried to pull down the cloth blinds only to have them whip around and around the dowel at the top of the window while the children outside laughed. That was one magical room to me; the room where I learned to read. Yes, yes. Thank you, my sweet first grade teacher.

And I don't know how old I can be if I can remember all of this like it was yesterday. If it's real in my mind, doesn't it exist in some universe somewhere?