Patch Blog: Dadmissions on Second Grade

Holy cow Alicia is entering the second grade. Why am I already getting sweaty palms!  

That means only ten years till she graduates, nine years till her first prom, eight years till she starts joining some JV sports team. I don't know what it is about second grade. It's a benchmark.  

My second grade teacher Ms Wiener was one of the best I ever had, a teacher I remember even today. If we got ten stars on the blackboard she'd make us air-popped popcorn. If we misbehaved, it would crush us when she erased one of those popcorn stars from the board.  

Second grade at Heights Elementary in Sharon, MA still meant rectangle pizza on Friday, and four square at recess, and the annual school fun fair with the cake walk where you could spend twenty dollars on tickets to win a four dollar cake. Second grade for me meant getting my tonsils out and running around Boston's Eye and Ear hospital while my parents chased me around the corridors because I didn't want to get shots.  

Once the surgery was done, second grade was also marked by a limited time of unlimited ice cream! Second grade meant rhythm sticks in music class, and glue paste in art class, and those clunky jump ropes made of 5,000 little plastic pieces on a string in gym class.  

Second grade meant the Michael Jackson fan club and the pinnacle of Thriller, Pac Man and Atari, and the kit car on Knight Rider. I still want that car. Second grade was way more than school.

Maybe this is such a big year for Alicia because I remember it so vividly. She is now going through one of the same grades in school that I remember most. I wonder what she'll remember most thirty years from now. I wonder what she'll tell her kids when they start second grade.

Until then, I will continue to keep her little for just a little while longer. No boyfriends, no inappropriate TV, and no bikini tops.  And yes, dad is volunteering to chaperone every school dance. Love you.