All I remember of that log was the first entry, in which I described how I spent the day. In school, we were introduced to the “New Math” that was all the rage among the education establishment in the 1970s. Our teacher, Mrs. Snell, began the first day’s lesson with a single, memorable question to the class: “Has anyone ever talked to you about sets?”
Being some distance from the front of the class, and perhaps distracted by a little blond girl named Christine who I had a crush on, I thought Mrs. Snell had said “sex”.
Not that sex was on my mind. I’m fairly certain that I had, at best, a sketchy idea of the notion. That education came in the sixth grade, when I read Jaws and, with my own jaw dropped wide open, was inadvertently exposed to the steamy details of the extramarital affair between Dr. Hooper and Chief Brodie’s wife. That part of the book didn’t make it into the movie.
Anyway, I thought Mrs. Snell had said “sex”, and that caught my attention. It sure took my mind off of Christine. My attraction to her was based on something I couldn’t put my finger on, but certainly nothing as remote in my mind as sex. Once Mrs. Snell began to enlighten us on sets, I quickly realized that I had heard her wrong, and that today’s lesson wasn’t going to be as awkward or fascinating as I momentarily thought it would be. My mind began to wander away again, just as it had done in every classroom since kindergarten began in 1968, and would continue to do though the end of business school in 1998.
The New Math, as it turned out, was basically a load of crap. I am comfortable making this statement, notwithstanding the fact that I got a C in math in the fifth grade. I just thought it was an incredibly roundabout way to teach some fairly simple and logical concepts. I figured the “old” math out well enough on my own, and that has worked for just fine for me.
During recess that day, I played on Log City, the immense, one-of-a-kind log play structure behind our school. Log City was the coolest playground in the universe. Made entirely of wood, it featured at least 300 ways for kids to get hurt on each of its three levels. Four log ends, each about 10 feet long, protruded from the top floor. Truck tires dangled from heavy duty chains attached to the log ends to form old-fashioned tire swings. On one side of Log City was a sort of log ladder, about 10 feet wide and leaning over about 45 degrees. The rungs were made of logs about a foot thick, with just enough room between them for an elementary school-age kid to get his foot caught in as he climbed down.
When we got enough kids stamping our feet in unison on the top of Log City, we could make it shake enough for us to think that it was going to topple over. From a structural engineering standpoint, we were probably close to making it do just that. But Log City provided about the most fun a nine-year old could find during the average elementary school recess hour. We loved it.
Of course, Log City did cause me my share of grief. In the sixth grade, probably about the same time I was undergoing my literary deflowering, courtesy of Peter Benchley’s shark attack-disguised-as-sex yarn, I cut my neck on the sliding board. As I hurtled down the colossal sliding board from the second story of Log City on a crisp winter day, the hood of my coat got caught in an exposed bolt sticking out from one of the logs. My coat was of the kind that every kid wore in the mid-1970s, with ersatz fur trim around the hood. The fur trim was intended by the little kid coat designers, I’m sure, to confer a sense of arctic adventure on their pint-sized consumers. The zipper pinched hard into the skin of my neck right below the Adams apple and cut deeply. To this day, people still ask me about the scar. I usually demur with a soft-focus voice, “I’m not ready to talk about that yet”.
About fifteen years later, just after I graduated from college, Log City was listed by some do-good safety group as being among the ten most dangerous playgrounds in the United States. It was promptly torn down.
Since then, Tuckahoe’s playground has been transformed into the “Tuckahoe Discovery Schoolyard Project”. It even has its own web page and “mission statement”:
Log city didn’t have a mission statement. Perhaps that was its downfall. Instead of swinging from tires and playing tag, the kids now have “interconnectedness” to look forward to at the recess bell."The Tuckahoe Discovery Schoolyard Project is a shared vision of the principal, teachers and parents at Tuckahoe to expand the school learning environment to the natural world. The mission is to create an exemplary, educational schoolyard. Principal Brown explains, "Our use of outdoor classrooms encourages broad-based learning that taps into the strengths and interests of all our students. It promotes interconnectedness on two levels - by blending the entire learning community and bringing so many areas of the curriculum together in a real-life setting."
In my journal entry that first day of school, I also introduced my friend Trey, who I described as my best friend. I lost touch with Trey after elementary school. Even though we went to the same junior high and high schools, we developed different pursuits and naturally went our separate ways. About 10 years ago, sometime after I turned 30, I ran into Trey in the beer aisle at the Giant. We talked for a few minutes, picked up our six packs, and bade farewell. There was no sentimental journey back in time. We were friends when we were little, but we’ve both changed a great deal since then. So has the world around us.
So what has happened to the world and me since that first day of fifth grade in September 1973? If I had kept that log updated, I could do a much better job of answering that question. The best I can do is sum things up in an endless list of broad generalizations: I grew up. Educational methods have evolved. Society is more litigious. There are more people everywhere.
In short, I have a good idea of how things used to be, and how they are now. I just don’t have a very good handle on how we got from there to here.
So this web log, or blog, is a continuation of that journal I started, and stopped, over thirty years ago. I will record my own observations, thoughts and experiences, and include the contributions of others, living and dead, as I see fit. The objective of the Factual Dog is simple: whatever the world and I look like 30 years from now, I will be able to better explain how we got there than I can describe the evolution of the last 30 years today.
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