Well, it's time once again for me to explore some of my memories of my fourth grade experiences at Nova Elementary School in Davie, Florida during 1965-66. And it will also be my last entry in this series, which for many of you has to feel like an exercise in irrelevance. Nevertheless, here I go again, this time discussing a few of the "social" trends taking place then within the student body. Remember, we're talking about 9-10 year-olds...
--There seemed to be an ongoing competition among the boys as to who could play the drum beat to the song "Wipeout" with their hands on their desks the fastest. It was a very common occurrence to be sitting in a classroom and hear some kid performing a session. I even tried it myself with poor results...
--Also, mainly a "boy" activity, was the game of "Split", where the two opponents would face off standing close opposite each other on a grassy or dirt surface. They would then take turns throwing a pencil into the ground on one side or the other. If it stuck, the other player would have to move whatever foot the pencil fell closest to alongside the pencil and pick it up...and then take his turn throwing it. Whoever was first to either make a throw that didn't stick or couldn't stretch enough to reach the other's throw lost the round. This game was an obsession with many for a while that year...
--"Cat's Cradle" was an activity that both girls and boys seemed to enjoy. There would be a pattern in a closed string that the players would take turns transferring, preserving it and then enhancing it. I played it a little, too...a strange game...
--Among the girls, I saw many playing "Patty-Cake", a mutual hand-clapping activity that thoroughly intimidated me. I never did see how they could remember how to synchronize their hands to meet each other for such long stretches of time...
--Among some of the boys developed an voluntary, informal "fight club" that reminded me a little of the same-titled movie (although without the blood). I participated in it for a while, but due to my scrawniness then I had to bow out after a while for the sake of survival...
--That year, the Batman TV series would come on ABC Tuesdays and Thursdays ("same bat-time, same bat-channel"). Along with it came Batman comic books and trading cards. I was heavily into both, and idolized Catwoman (played then by Julie Newmar of My Favorite Doll fame). Often I'd go to school and hear the highlights of the previous evening's show...
--Toward the end of the school year, some of the boys discovered that by rubbing a smooth-edged coin like a nickel on their forearm for a minute or two, they would temporarily get a pleasant sensation before the pain kicked in. Totally boneheaded. One of the dumber of this group came into class one day with his arm bandaged and in a sling: he had bloodied it up and needed to go to the nurse's station after using a dime instead! Unbelievable...
--I don't rightly know why, but among some of us it was a status symbol to have possession of blocks of wax. Maybe some of the kids ate it for all I know (most likely the ones rubbing coins on their arms). The way to get some wax was to go to the Practical Arts Room down the hallway and ask Mr. Mielock for some wax. Apparently, he would always hand some over to anyone who requested it, no questions asked. I even went there and procured some myself, just to get into the experience...which ultimately made no sense whatsoever to me...
--I'm not much for the gossip of those times...let's see...Paige and Doug were an item, Hope hated the Beatles, Terry once made Mr. Johnston cry. Sorry, that's the best I could do...
Well, I enjoyed going down memory lane and touching upon some of the things that stuck with me over the decades about the first year I spent in the Nova School system. I wish I could remember other years as well as this one...
