who’s bob?
music friday: new order, “temptation”

who am us, anyway?

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:

bidwell 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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