OPINION: The school years were like sand through the hourglass

I can remember her first day as I escorted her to class with neither of us knowing what to expect. I remember the Field Days at the end of each school year, the parent/teacher conferences, the school programs, and even times of squeezing myself in the small seat in the lunchroom when having lunch with her from time to time. It all seems like yesterday. My friends were right. Those five years of elementary school seem as if they were just a couple of months ago.

Then my friends warned me of the transition from elementary to middle school; their warnings of how our kids seemingly change overnight from day one of middle school. My friends were once again right on target. I do remember the transition well, but the middle school years seem like a blur. It was as if someone pushed down on the accelerator of time and in the blink of an eye, middle school was history. High school is next; the home stretch before she walks across the stage wearing a cap and gown. I’m feeling older as I write this column.

As we strolled through the Freshman Academy during Open House at the start of the school year, I began to feel a sigh of relief. Not that sigh a parent feels when their child has finally reached high school, but a thankful sigh of relief that I’m not the one going to school. While walking the halls trying to find classrooms, I saw familiar sights that gave me flashbacks of my days in school. I saw panic on the faces of freshman. Their faces told the story. Feelings of being lost and feelings of the unknown were all too familiar to me. Again, I was thankful that I was on the outside, as a parent, looking in and wasn’t in their shoes on that night.

While walking through those halls, flashbacks from my school days were rapidly running through my mind. Those flashbacks took me back, not necessarily those of high school, but my earlier school years. I flashed back to my first grade year and the times that I would wear red rubber rain boots to school almost every day. I’m still not sure why I had an obsession with those boots and I was too young to have thoughts of starting a new trend. They just felt right and gave me some sense of security and yes, I was reminded often of how stupid I looked in them. In today’s time, they would fit right in with some of the dress styles we see around us.

My elementary school was an old four story building with hardwood floors that would shine bright from the several layers of built up wax. The old Leslie Elementary School in Greenwood, South Carolina was leveled many years ago and the grounds now serve as a parking lot for Lander University. But as I daily walked those floors in route to the lunchroom, I would always cross paths with my brother who was three grades ahead of me. He would never pass on the opportunity to greet me by holding up two fingers symbolizing the peace sign. I guess that was his way of comforting me as a first grader. We were opposites in many ways. Teachers would often contact my parents to schedule conferences for two reasons; one because I wouldn’t talk enough, and two because my brother talked too much.

We all have our vivid memories and stories from our school days of the past. They were either good memories or ones that we tend to deposit in the horror sections of our memory banks. But for me, a little boy who never had much to say, it still seems like only yesterday that I walked around those old school hallways sporting my red rubber rain boots. Time flies!

Dallas Bordon is a regular contributor to The Madison County Journal.