Almanac: Back to School Nights – My memories as a student

In the first part of this series, I described what Back to School Night was like for teachers. Here's the flip side.

I remember only one “Back to School Night”—AKA “Open House”—from my K-8 days. I’m sure the schools had one every fall. I remember the one I remember because of what my 6^th-grade class did that night.

It was the school year of 1961-1962. My 6^th-grade teacher was Mr. Richard Leffler. He was cool. We did lots of innovative things in our class.

Some of us designed a bomb shelter for the school. We included all kinds of amenities: movie theater and separate “houses” for families. We also included an exercise area because President Kennedy was pushing the first nationwide physical fitness program.

We collected all the leftover milk from lunch for at least two weeks. We used huge plastic trashcans as dumpsites for the milk. After wheeling those to our room, we used dill pickle jars to scoop the milk out. We graphed the data. I have no idea what ever became of our experimental data.

We recorded the script for the puppet show we put on at Back to School Night. We’d built marionettes out of paper mache, cloth, and cardboard. The puppeteers were live that night, but the script was all pre-recorded with jungle noises, etc.

I remember only my first line, which was the first line of the play. Spoken in the fake British accent of an 11-year-old, it went

“’Old on to everything, Soggy Noddle, old boy. We’re going down the Amazon!”

The other time I remember being involved in Back to School Night as a student was in my junior year in high school. Mrs. Helen Tubb was my teacher. She’d been my 10^th-grade teacher, too—that’s relevant as you’ll see.

We were studying Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar at the time. I was selected to give Anthony’s Funeral Oration.

I changed from my school clothes into a toga, flip-flops, and a headpiece of some kind in her office. The oration was delivered from the hallway outside our English room to the throng, 20-40 parents, standing on the sloping grassy area between classroom buildings.

An Unrelated Aside

I was pretty much a model student. I did all my work and usually completed it before the due date. I recall getting in trouble once. One of my buddy’s and I managed to get a bathroom pass at the same time from Mrs. Happle in 5^th grade.

Being 10-year-old boys, it shouldn’t surprise you that we ended up doing more that #1 or #2 during that trip. We alternated standing on the toilet seat and flushing the toilet with our foot. As the “woosh” of water echoed throughout the concrete and tile facility, we swayed back and forth as we feigned being sucked down into the sewer by the flush.

Big fun!

Mrs. Rushing was the Principal of Spring Valley Elementary at that time. Little did we know that she wandered the hallways. She barged in while we were goofing off.

I was mortified.

End of Unrelated Aside

Aside #2 - Relevant to the situation

For reasons I cannot explain, Cindee Harrsen found herself seated directly in front of me in several classes. That was the case in Mrs. Tubb’s class as 10^th-graders.

• Armchair desks were in columns with room to walk between the columns on both sides of the desks.
• During the course of classes on many days, I would provide commentary to Mrs. Tubb’s lectures under my breath but directly into Cindee’s ear. She tolerated my nonsense until one of two things happened.
• She snickered at something I said.
• She turned around and told me to be quiet. She might have said “shut up,” but I remember her as a polite person so I’ll go with “be quiet.”)
• In either case, she got in trouble.

I, on the other hand, remained the stalwart student.

End of Aside #2

While I was proclaiming,

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.

BTW, even though I copied and pasted this from a website, I did have it all written down except the last two words before I copied and pasted.

Cindee and her accomplices snuck into Mrs. Tubb’s office and removed my school clothes. Whether that was with or without Mrs. Tubb’s approval remains a mystery to this day.

I don’t remember what my final cost was to retrieve my dignity. I don’t remember driving home in a toga, so I figure she “kindly” returned my outfit before I left school that night. However, that could be a false memory.

Here’s what she wrote in my yearbook that year. Sorry for the poor quality of the scan. I let my high school students look at my yearbooks for 31 years.

 

Here's what it says. Chuck, This year has been so quiet without you to cap on me. I bet all your classes were awful boring without me, right? I know with you quarterbacking four our football team, we should take 1st place (well, as long as I'm lying about how great you are I thought I do all the way) Just you wait - some day you'll be sorry for everything you've said and done to me (ava cava and all - including the junior car wash) Well, since your yelling at me to stop - I'll quit. Hope we have some classes next year - thought I'd liven your life a little. Have fun this summer, Bye, Cindee Harrsen P.S. I hope you find your pants. You look kind of funny without them. Of course you look funny any way. You can get of my popularity with females high school was universal by reading the first couple of lines of the next yearbook entry.

Next Almanac – I don’t have a clue.

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