A friend whose anniversary it is rhetorically asked where we, the audience, were 20 years ago today. This got me remembering.
I was 10, almost 11. It would have been the summer between fifth and sixth grades, I think. We would’ve been out of school by now — kids these days seem to be in classes later than we were. That winter we had moved to the house that my parents still live in. I seem to remember a good deal of reading (specifically the “Sword of Shannara” which I’d been given as a graduation present), tromping through the woods, and swimming across the lake (too cold in June). I hadn’t learned to play trumpet yet. I hadn’t picked up my love of hiking. I’d never seen or heard a baseball game. The next year I’d get shipped across a mountain pass to Jr. High. There was a freedom to summers when I was a child which I suspect will be unreproducible in my children’s lives. My mother was a school teacher, so she was off summers. I’m sure she provided childcare, but I don’t really remember being actively taken care of. I remember the freedom and the roaming.
What about you? Where were you 20 years ago today?
My Truant Pen 
Twenty years ago I still believed I would be able to maintain my yard — it was going to be beautiful. It was our first year (I think) with the Rhodies — in all their color — and the first year of heading them all. I think you read, a lot. We were going to the library in Centralia then — the beautiful brick one with the momument to the Wobblies in the front. It was the year after you got an S- in reading — because you were anti workbook, I believe. Your worse grade ever. You weren’t very clean, but you were happy that year. I remember you brought in all ourdoors on your feet!
I was a really new teacher and I could hardly wait for the end of the year — I thought it would never come! I had all sorts of ideas for the next year — what I would and wouldn’t do. I am always sorry to see the end of the school year now. I had so much more to do. We did planet reports, but I didn’t have time to play “The Planets” for them. And Mme. Jeanpierre didn’t get to come back. And we didn’t finish the discussion questions in “Let’s talk about it” box. And we didn’t get to do the Bill of rights. Or find out why modular arithmetic is important in crypography.
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