So Long, First Grade (almost)

This is from the LA Times, and I love it:

So long, first grade

When you're 7, life's possibilities seem endless.

Chris Erskine

June 19, 2010



Dear first-graders,

At the end of the year, here are a few things I'd like to bring to your attention: You approach each day as if you've already had a glass of $100 Champagne. Your entire lives have been like the second hour of a very good wedding reception.

As with Champagne itself, you have lots of bubbles and none of them has been burst — Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, corporate capitalism. They all thrive in your crazy, pudding-filled heads.

The other day, my own son — who is one of you — lifted his head to the sky and blew, thinking he could move the clouds.

First-graders, huh? Get a grip, you kids.

Don't you know how life beats you down? Don't you know yet about the discrepancy between dreams and outcomes?

No, obviously you don't. You stand around each morning before class, talking about the teeth you lost overnight and noting how the new gaps in your smiles are great for milkshake straws. "My dad pulled out my tooth," Ava says. "He just grabbed it and twisted. There was blood."

Oh, quit your bragging, Ava.

I see you and your little buddies each day before class, waiting for Mrs. Patterson to open the classroom door, hungry for her great New York accent. You soak it up with your pink-tipped ears, like baby mice. You are 7, and while you wait you wiggle like the inner workings of an old watch. You wear your heartbeats on your snotty little sleeves.

Listen, I've been studying you all year, and I have reached this disturbing conclusion: You have no apparent cliques, you kids. I mean, what are you thinking? This is L.A., for gosh sakes, where we don't even let people into NBA games unless they make $1.5 million (a week).

I see what you're up to. You're weirdly egalitarian in a world that no longer celebrates such things. You mingle each day as if at some college mixer. Evidently, a first-grader doesn't care much for fashion, or fancy haircuts or what your daddy does. All a first-grader cares about is whether you laugh at his silly jokes. Then you're in his frat. It is a very big frat — the biggest in the world. That doesn't mean it's the best.

Seriously, you're all nuts. You're showoffs, too. I've volunteered in the classroom several times over the course of the school year, helping you with your reading, only to discover some of you have larger vocabularies than I do.

So, not only are you excessively fair, you're scary smart. I think I hate you. You might be as perfect as people ever get.

On occasion, I also read to you. Once, on Dr. Seuss Day, I read you a book with so many "whatcha-ma-jiggies" and "thinga-ma-bops" that I grew faint-headed and spilled out of my chair. You thought I was joking when I fell to the floor, not realizing that I am a man of substance. I never joke. When I give wedding toasts, for example, they are somber expressions about the dangers of commitment, like something Tolstoy would write after a stormy fling.

But back to the subject at hand: first-graders. Don't care much for you guys. Never have. Never will.

One day, before a field trip, the entire class sang a few songs to get the day rolling. You sang a heartfelt "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," then a rousing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." In 100 years, school kids will still be singing 'My Country, 'Tis Of Thee" and "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," a small and comforting realization in a large and ornery world.

OK, I'll give you that Occasionally, you can be kind of cute.

Before we forget, let's be sure to thank Mrs. Patterson for all she did. Teaching you knuckleheads to read, for example. Teaching you to focus, to organize, to function as part of a wild and disparate group.

Teaching you to write. Teaching you that Ms are not rainbows, and that each letter cannot be an entirely different size or color. When my little guy first began to write, the Os were quite large and the Bs quite minuscule. He took pride in the variation. He worked hard to make each character unique.

Somehow, Mrs. Patterson straightened him out. As with the alphabet itself, she made him part of a group, but let him be his own unique self.

Now, to thank her, you kids are leaving, heading off to second grade. In my experience, that's how kids show their appreciation. They leave. No one should ever take it personally.

So, goodbye, Mrs. Patterson; celebrate this moment. There must be a special corner of heaven for first-grade teachers. Sort of a VIP section, where the margaritas keep flowing and no one ever screams.

And goodbye, you first-graders. Summer awaits, long and lazy — traditionally a bubble-rich environment.

Catch a ballgame. Lose some teeth. Move some clouds.

But don't you dare forget first grade, when you were as perfect as people ever get.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times