I went to school in the ’60’s, ’70’s, and ’80’s. It was somehow different than school today, yet still the same. We had drills. Not drills the tool, but drills for safety and the common good of both teacher’s and children. Fire drills, tornado drills, I think I remember “bend over and kiss your ass goodbye drills” too.
There was the now infamous “duck and cover” that left all children kneeling under their desks. Not exactly a brilliant idea. Common classroom design where I grew up all had one side of the room made mostly of windows…
Maybe it was all safety glass. (It wasn’t…)
As my schools changed, so did the drills. We no longer did “duck and cover” for public emergencies, but we still had fire drills. And, because I was living in the Midwest, we also had tornado drills too. I don’t think a windows were ever made of safety glass, but what’s a few shards of flying glass between friends…right?
Fire drills were OK, we had to march outside in an orderly fashion making sure everyone was full accounted for at all times. Maybe we weren’t exactly told to march, I think I added that part myself so the drill wasn’t quite so boring to me.
Looking back, I had a pretty rich inner life!
Fire drills ended on a block of cement called a “playground”. I’m thinking that the public school system must have had a “rich inner life” too, if they thought a slab of cement was a playground.
Oh, I stand corrected, it wasn’t only a slab of cement, there was a small circular opening for single tetherball pole. Yeah! That’s right, one single pole for all the classes to share, if you’d like to call it that sharing. Inevitably the biggest and oldest kids controlled it until everyone else left. Once the other kids left, the oldest kids found something else to do, and then no one played tetherball.
Ya, leaving the children to their own devices there went really well…
I’ll have to tell my illustrious tetherball stories another time though. This essay is about drills, like I said – not the object, but, the thing…
And I do digress.
Tornado drills were a little less fun. It was like “duck and cover” except we were in the building’s hallway, kneeling by our assigned locker. Large heavy “fire doors” were placed throughout the building, and there were few or no windows in the hallways.
It beat the hell out of the “duck and cover” method of safety, I’ll have to give the “hallway method” it’s due there.
But, at the time I was very sure the school would implode anyway. Or, at the very least, a section or two of the school would be sent to Oz. I also knew for sure that Dorothy was back in Kansas with Toto. And, despite being grammatically incorrect, I knew that Oz never did give nothin’ to the tin man, that he didn’t, didn’t, already have.
I heard that one on the radio and it made sense to me.
Being a tin man actually sounded pretty good to me. Like I said before, I had a deep inner life when I was younger. To an extent, that has followed me through to today. People do call me Monster afterall…
And, I do still wonder why my worms ran away!
