Out with the pencils, in with the iPods

by Susan Anderson
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 1:52 PM MDT

Be prepared for a sentimental column this week. And it’s fitting, since you can’t turn around this time of year without bumping into a graduation of some kind.

There are ceremonies marking the transition from high school, college and even preschool. Earning a GED (general equivalency diploma) can be one of proudest and most touching celebrations.

My experience was with sixth-grade graduation. It’s a reflection of sheer good fortune to be living the kind of life where you can sit in a school gymnasium with a group of parents and kids who have attended functions in the same school for seven years, starting with kindergarten.

But that doesn’t diminish the fact that all those years of parent meetings, school dances, kid music concerts and just ordinary lunches were ending on this one night.

It’s almost too much to take in, so I didn’t take it in. But my friend Char warned my husband to watch out for her because, “I cry when the last Oreo cookie comes out of the box.” Surprisingly (to me), the sixth-graders were also full of tears, including a few of the boys.

For this occasion, girls who hardly could remember to brush their hair a few months ago wore sleek dresses with satin sashes and grown-up shoes that might impress the ladies from “Sex and The City.”

Our own 12-year-old daughter’s second-grade soccer coach hadn’t seen her lately and almost fainted when he beheld the newly minted almost-teenager shaking her teachers’ hands and posing coolly for pictures.

I looked at the clock on the gym wall and remembered how many times I’ve furtively checked that clock in the past seven years and wondered if the event I was attending -- a talent show, a parent meeting or a concert -- would ever end.

And then they did end.

Recurring nightmares

I’m grateful that school principals and teachers think of holding ceremonies for a transition that easily could pass unnoticed.

But, in fact, moving from primary school and the one class with the same kids you have known since kindergarten to swimming down the halls of junior high like a school of fish to different teachers and classes each hour or so is about as abrupt a change as I can imagine.

This is a change that leads to some of those awful recurring school nightmares. One friend’s very small daughter dreamt night after night that she would get lost on her first day of junior high and be trampled by all the bigger kids.

Here’s a favorite dream: you can’t get your locker open and have to go to class and face the music for not having your book.

Or there’s the very realistic fear that you can’t possibly go down three flights of stairs and across the school with your heavy load of books in time for the next class.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I still sometimes am visited by that horrifying dream even now -- I’ve got to get to class, but there’s not enough time to find my way. Plus, I’m lost and haven’t done any of the homework.

But for all the angst among students and parents, there’s also a sense of excitement at a graduation for 12-year-olds. They know that everything will be new in just a few months and that their groupings (cliques is the other, more depressing word for this) will shift like the colors in a kaleidoscope when you turn it to shuffle all the pieces.

The only way to get through this is to look forward to the next experience. There’s no question that junior high will be interesting.

And certainly people in tougher times and places need for their kids to grow up to survive and help the family. That we can have fleeting wishes that they would stay children is a great luxury.

But when I drive by Park School for many years, I expect to feel a twinge after I take a look at the playground to see what my daughter is doing and realize again after a split second that the grade school student has morphed into something entirely different.

The consolation is the relief that they may, after all, grow up. And there’s the little-discussed truth that teenagers are actually a lot of fun.

Remind me of that next year, will you?

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