School Safety

I miss school. 

I miss the new notebooks, the new binders, the new lunch kit. I miss riding my bike 2.5 miles in the cool autumn mornings and the return ride in the warm if not actually hot afternoons.

The first week was the best...sandwiches of tomatoes and dark prune plums for lunch. 

New, to me, readers and textbooks would have all been passed out by the teacher. Spare time would be spent exploring the topics with a sense of pride that one must be pretty mature and grown up to study what seemed like mysterious and intricate topics such as 3 digit division, the six simple machines with diagrams along with a new dictionary and atlas.

Every new notebook would have had its most neatly written page nearly filled with the determination that THIS year every page following would remain as neat.

There have been more important moments in my life with more important outcomes but right now and at this point in time my memories as a prairie girl going to a rural school in the 50s are as precious as any other.

I felt safe and secure at that school as ever I have ever felt..in spite of the Cold War, the need for polio vaccines, and dangers of unpasteurized milk. I guess sometimes ignorance is bliss.