When we were children playing

Sometimes we fell and scraped something, or were momentarily hurt when we weren’t chosen for a team until the choosing was nearly done, but what I most recall as I stood at that fence, was that whatever direction I looked when I was on that schoolyard, most of us, much of the time, were happy beyond belief; that in these few stolen moments nothing was terribly wrong beyond someone hitting us with a large red rubber ball and yelling, “You’re out! You’re out!”

I remember I happened to like dodge ball because I was quick. Elementary school was six grades then and I often didn’t shine in the weekly math bees our teacher Mrs. Wilson — who always had a cloth flower pinned in her hair — insisted upon subjecting us to. But I was unstoppable in dodge ball. At least, in memory.

All these years later, one recollection has remained indelible. For a long time, I’d been the fastest kid in school. But, by sixth grade, suddenly I wasn’t. We’d have foot races at recess and I started losing to a girl, Sudie Bickel. I never beat her. Though most school memories from this time are buried beyond reach, I remember these races and I remember this constant losing. At the time, it was simply discovering that someone else at the school — a girl! — was much faster than I ever would be. What would come later — the knowledge that there always would be people smarter or more talented — found its unassailable beginnings with the outcome of those races: I was awakening into my life.

Inside a closet door where we live, my wife JoAnneh has taped a photo of my sixth grade class. Each time I open this door to grab a pair of socks, I see the picture. I’m in the front row, which, because of my height was my usual spot in every class picture I was in. I’m always surprised that, staring at their faces, I can remember most of my classmates’ names. Also, I realize how little I truly knew of their lives. I barely remember them as individuals at recess. My memory of us is simply as a bunch of kids, packed full of youthful energy. I didn’t really understand what they were like inside themselves, these people I spent years of my childhood with. But they touched me just the same, for we found our freedom together in the celebration of play.

At recess, red balls flying through the air were our immediate reality, and the events of the adult world then — the Cold War or McCarthyism — were beyond our imaginings, never really tapping us on our shoulders. As far as we were concerned, these things could’ve been happening in outer space.  

Too soon, the bell would ring and Mrs. Wilson called us in. I remember always looking forward, each day, to seeing that flower in her hair.

All these years later, as I stood at that fence, I briefly watched three girls who were now playing jump rope nearby. Listening to their exuberant laughter and shouts in the wind, I thought how a part of their lives was being curated upon this playground — woven into each life — just as mine had been. And around them, I imagined thousands of invisible footprints. The footprints of our childhoods, the footprints we never leave completely behind.

Mike Nagler taught for many years at Cañada College and was a member of the Burlingame Library Board and Foundation.