who am us, anyway?
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Every Thursday on Google Plus, people are invited to post old photos, which are then archived here:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/106267642503923678462/about
Today I posted this, my second-grade class photo from March, 1960:
That’s me in the front row, fifth from the left, with my pants legs rolled up.
What got my attention when looking at this photo again was the date. Whenever I talk off the top of my head about my childhood, I think of my schooling all occurring in the 1960s, culminating in my high-school graduation in June of 1970. I guess I never counted backwards far enough to realize just when I started school. But that’s what blogs are for …
- 1967-70: high school … back then, in Antioch, high school was grades 10-12, with junior high (I guess it’s called middle school now) being grades 7-9.
- 1964-1967: junior high school
- 1959-1964: grade school
- 195?: pre-school
It’s grade school that surprised me. I was a charter member of Bidwell Elementary School, which opened during my kindergarten year … if I recall correctly, the opening was a few weeks late, so I went to another school at the start. I was promoted out of first grade a few weeks into the school year, so in the photo above, I was a year younger than most/all of my classmates. In my memory, it opened in 1960.
But that memory is off by two years. When I count backwards, kindergarten was in 1958-9, then first grade for a bit in 1959, and second grade in 1959-60. Bidwell opened in 1958.
I know this is of little interest to anyone but me. I’m just a little flabbergasted to think I was already going to school, not pre-school but regular old school, in 1958. It makes me wonder … do people who were born in 1963, and who are thus “70s kids”, think much about their lives in the 60s? How about 1973, or ‘83, or ‘93? I usually assume the 60s were my formative years, but now I’m not so sure.
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