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| Well, it was fun for me . . . |
My friend, Cathy's dad had a wonderful
job.
Magical.
He got to sneak into the schools after
everyone had left.
Wander at will through the empty
hallways and classrooms.
And clean.
Oh, man, it was the coolest!
And sometimes, wonder of wonders, he
let Cathy and I and some of his other kids (12 in all ) . . . help.
There were times when we got to race
the huge, soft dry-mops up and down the hallways.
And I do mean race.
Empty the garbage cans.
Snoop.
Did you know that the teacher's lounge
of the sixties smelled like cigarette smoke?
Just FYI.
Moving on . . .
And, best of all, he let us clean the
brushes.
In the sixties, whiteboards were black.
And pieces of chalk were used instead
of today's dry-erase felts.
These pieces of chalk marked the
blackboards very effectively.
There were only a couple of drawbacks.
They had the ability to squeak against
the board at decibels that could shatter glass.
And they left a lot of chalk dust.
A lot.
Especially when someone tried to clean
said chalk from said blackboard.
The thick, black-felt erasers used to
accomplish this quickly became saturated with the fine, white dust.
Then they had to be cleaned.
Now a normal person would simply take
the vacuum to them.
A normal person.
Kathy and I were ten.
I should point out here that there is
nothing normal about a 10-year-old.
Back to my story . . .
Cathy and I would collect the brushes.
Cart them outside.
And bang them together.
Imagine, if you will, a cloud of fine,
white dust.
With two little girls somewhere near
the center of it.
Giggling.
You get it, right?!
What on earth could be more fun?
The fact that the dust merely got
relocated and that the two little girls then had to, themselves, be
cleaned, never even entered our minds.
For a brief, wonderful while, we were
the center of our very own little dust storm.
I can still remember how it smelled.
And, as it collected on our tongues,
just how it tasted.
Magic.
There is an unexpected codicil: Fifteen
years later, I was expecting my third child. Another boy.
I craved something. In fact, I could
almost taste it. It took forever to figure out what that taste was.
Then it hit me.
Chalk.
I was craving chalk.
And not the light, cheap stuff that had
become common.
No.
I was craving the good stuff.
The stuff that Cathy and I used to
clean out of those brushes and catch in our mouths all those years
ago.
The doctor told me I was lacking in
minerals and gave me some pills to swallow.
Sigh.
I wish he would have simply given me
some brushes to clean . . .
