Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you’re a kid living your best 1970s life:
You’re not just going to school.
You’re starring in a coming-of-age film directed by Spielberg, scored by John Williams, and funded by the PTA bake sale.
Elementary School in the late ’70s wasn’t an institution —
it was a universe.
A universe where everything felt giant and magical and slightly sticky.
Back then:
Kindergarten was a half day
because no adult in 1979 was trying to entertain twenty-five six-year-olds for eight straight hours.
We built cities with real wooden blocks, took naps on unforgiving carpet squares, and ate paste casually like it was a food group.
Third grade cursive was treated like the unveiling of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“You will now learn… THE LOOPY SECRET LANGUAGE OF ADULTS.”
We were solemn.
We were reverent.
We dotted our i’s with circles because that was our only act of rebellion.
Recess was not optional.
It was survival.
We played outside hard —
like “if you didn’t come home with a mystery bruise the size of Idaho, you weren’t trying.”
In the rain, in the snow, in the apocalypse — it did not matter.
Teachers were like, “Go outside and run until the chaos leaves your body.”
And we did.
We walked to school even if it was basically the Oregon Trail.
No adult supervision.
No GPS tracker.
No helmet.
Just a windbreaker, a granola bar, and blind trust in the universe.
Everyone rode their bikes, and the bike racks looked like a pack of wild metal animals waiting to stampede.
You always knew where your friends were by the pile of Schwinns abandoned in a driveway.
That was our Find My Friends app.
Your babysitter was always somebody’s aunt, grandmother, or neighbor who smelled like Noxzema and made grilled cheese that could fix your entire life.
Homework happened second. Or never.
Play first.
Life first.
Joy first.
That was the curriculum.
And teachers?
Teachers were gods and goddesses in sensible shoes.
I worshipped my fifth-grade teacher —
the one who played guitar in class like we were at a folk festival instead of learning long division.
Back then elementary school lasted until sixth grade, so you spent seven years with “your people” — your tribe, your lunch-table family, your fellow survivors of dodgeball trauma.
We watched movies on giant rolling TV carts that looked like they required a pilot’s license.
If the lights dimmed and you saw that claymation Rudolph’s nose glow red?
It was better than Christmas morning.
You had to wait a whole YEAR to see the Abominable Snowman again. Delayed gratification built our souls.
Possibility lived in those hallways.
Back then, you could be anything — an astronaut, a firefighter, a breakdancer, a professional Lite-Brite designer.
No dream was too big or too weird.
I remember everything:
The desks that opened like treasure chests of chaos.
Mine always looked like the Hindenburg crashed inside it.
The gob of ancient gum fossilized underneath.
The smell of sharpened pencils and floor wax and childhood.
I remember every teacher by name.
Every classroom.
Every hallway.
Every feeling.
And when I look back at those class photos —
the ones where we wore clothes that looked like they were borrowed from a disco-themed yard sale —
I don’t see awkwardness.
I see freedom.
I see innocence.
I see a time before brand names and schedules and water bottles that cost as much as my first car.
I see kids who were allowed to be kids.
And here’s the gut punch:
I didn’t know it then,
but those were the last years before life asked me to be anything other than myself.
Those wooden blocks, those bike rides, those chalky classroom movies —
they built something in me.
They built wonder.
And now, decades later, in this strange, beautiful season of remembering…
I finally understand:
Those days weren’t just childhood.
They were the blueprint.
My first home.
My first safety.
My first North.
And God, I’m grateful I can see it now.
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