Elementary it was

I was born in 1970. The first few years I of course don't remember. I have fleeting moments of memory. They float by out of know where. My mom carrying me inside the house in a laundry basket after hanging clean laundry on the line outside. My brother pushing me down the stairs, in that same laundry basket. I would slide down, gripping the basket and laughing.

I remember my Dad's work had activities we got to go to. The Amusement park, The farm, other places I don't remember. We had T=shirts that we wore, they were company Tshirts that came in several colors. One activity we would wear blue, the next we would wear yellow. At the time it was fun.

School started after Labor Day, We started the day with Pledge of Allegiance to the great country we live in, although I think we should still do this, but with that being said, I also believe we are just one and therefore shouldn't have different countries. We should all be humans living on the planet Earth.

After the pledge we began our day. Once subject after another and sometimes we got to move to another class for a subject. Math, English or Art. PE was usually a different teacher as well. Each grade doing activities throughout the week ad rotating days with other grades. My favorite day in PE was when we got to play with the parachutes. That was always fun, but sadly just another thing they don't do anymore.

I remember a spelling list every week. I remember being taught cursive, which nowadays feels more like a secret language because not many people from the current generation know how to read it. My writing style personally has always been a mix of the two which was frowned upon all through my academic life, until of course college where they don't seem to care.

We had Art class and reading and if we were lucky we got to watch a video of some sort. My fondest memories of grade school, or elementary school though, were the holidays. The class parties, the programs we put on. Valentine's was fun because you seemed to get a ton of homeade heart shaped sugar cookies. My grandmas were the best.

Halloween in the past was dressing up before school and bringing treats for the class party. After the Pledge of Allegiance we would go outside for the annual parade. Our parents would take our picture and watch as the school paraded like a snake through out the playground. We could wear our masks which were thin molded plastic masks, bunnies, super heroes, villains'.

Thanksgiving we always did a program for our parents. Each grade doing their own. I remember being a pilgrim one year. We would sing songs, and practice endlessly. We had the programs at night so both parents could attend. Christmas We would do the same, I have a memory of being an angel and wearing a white gown that had wings I could take off and put on.

Out of all the holidays we celebrated with class parties Halloween has always been the best. It's my favorite Holiday, then and now. I decorate my home, I pass out treats and invite people for parties. It's the phantasy, the stepping into something else. The being whatever you want to be.

When my kids went to school they no longer said the Pledge of Allegiance. They started school before Labor day, and went til after Memorial day. They sometimes did programs, but nothing like when I was young. The parties are still celebrated, some of them anyway. Halloween parties, but they no longer can dress up before school. They had to take their costumes and the parents could still take our pictures, but we had to go in the middle of the day, if we were lucky enough to be able to get off work to go see them at all.

In this world today, both parents work. Sometimes two jobs, we try and find things to do from home and still with two, sometimes three paychecks, still we struggle, so getting off work is not always an option. For single parents which there are many more than in the past, Sometimes we had to work two jobs, three jobs and still the lack. We grew up in a world that more and more told us there was lack.

Once you got the pictures you could go home and let them walk home a couple hours later, or you could stay and watch their party go on. Games, treats and clean up. They now only get a quarter of the day with holiday parties, they cannot bring cookies or anything else made at home. It has to be store bought and preferably packaged individually.

It's always the best that gets taken away. I'm sure the generation before me feels the same . We all look to the past. It was a simpler time will always be what we say about it. Each year that passes seems to leave things duller. Colors don't seem as bright. The sky not quite so blue as it was then. Schools we attended are no longer and the new ones get bigger and bigger to accommodate a larger amount of children.

In high school I got to have a wider variety of food at lunch, more choices and by then, even vending machines with soda and candy bars. It was like feeling a taste of being grown. The elementary schools didn't get soda or candy bars except maybe in the teachers lounge.

We got photography class, Parenting, and wood shop. We got drivers Ed and automotive. Now they have classes I never would of dreamed of when I was young. Computer skills of different kinds just to mention one I noticed the last time we were in a school.

What they should teach though and I feel like maybe at some time in the distant past or a different dimension perhaps already did, or do, is gardening. We should be learning about fruits and vegetables, herbs for medicine, trees, and all about other plants that you don't even eat.

I think we should be taught how to wash the dishes, do the laundry, and take care of our finances. I think we should learn to fill out resumes and applications, having basic typing, computer skills, and home skills so that when we step into the adult age they give us we can actually do it well and not end up as one of the current generations that does nothing but play video games, and say they don't know how.

I think we should be allowed to paint, and sing and learn to play the guitar or piano. I think we should craft, and carve, and build. Not work and work and work. I think it was wrong to get rid of the pride in ourselves as a country but also feel that we have given up on pride in ourselves. We have let the world divide us, rule us, play us like puppets at the end of so many strings.

Marionettes nothing more than amusement for someone else. We don't get to spend time doing what we want or loving what we do. We don't get to have a passion that drives us to do better, be better. We can't live where we want or see what we want to see, and very rarely to we get to be who we want to be.

We've lost sight of what we are suppose to be doing here. We no longer ask what our purpose is. We wake we work, we go from job to job. We clean we cook, we sleep again. An endless circle repeating, replaying over and over until we no longer even care why we do it.

Will the next generation feel as though we are the simpler time? Will they look back fondly at what I feel is just chaos never ending or will they wake up and do what we never did. Will they see that if they just stop complying it will get us back to those simpler times.

If we start refusing to pay what they say, and do what they do, and instead we join hands and start doing what we want to do what could really happen? Gardens all around us, food for everyone, trading, singing, dancing, growing. What would the world be like? Simpler times, the not so distant past. A time when I thought it would go on forever.