Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

When I walked past the local elementary school today, I heard kids voices coming from inside. This seemed strange to me, because I would have thought classes would be over right now.

Outside were a bunch of young kids playing basketball. From inside somewhere, the strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" floated. Were they preparing for a graduation ceremony? From elementary school?

The idea of having a graduation from grade school always seemed odd to me. It's not, strictly speaking, an end to anything more than a grade level.

When you graduate from high school, you can stop there and have a high school diploma. Same thing with college, same thing with grad school. You stop with sixth grade and you really haven't accomplished much.

I guess it's supposed to make the kids feel like they've accomplished something, but it seems a little condescending. They know that they've achieved something; they're moving onto another school. Why caps and gowns are required is beyond me.

This time of the year, usually school would be over. But if we were still having classes, they would be throwaway days where we were basically just going so the school district could claim we'd attended the requisite number of days that year.

At this time of year, wearing shorts and carrying a deck of cards became mandatory. While there were a few teachers who wanted to finish things up — having a final exam, turning in a final essay — most of them just had a free day. We would either do something fun like watch a movie (educational, of course) or would have a "party" which consisted of chips, soda and card games.

In junior high I learned a lot of card games I no longer play and on which I am fuzzy on the rules. There was Spit, Golf, double Solitaire, War, gin, poker, and of course Bullshit. Bullshit was the most fun for a large group of people. You'd shuffle together as many different card decks as you desired. Then you'd distribute all of them.

You'd go around the circle clockwise and each person would put some cards down in the pile and say how many cards and what suit they'd put down. But you had to proceed in the order of the deck, so if the person behind you put down jacks, you had to put down queens.

Now if somebody didn't believe you, they could say, "Bullshit." Then you had to show them your cards. If you had been telling the truth, they had to take the entire pile. If you'd been lying, you had to take the pile. The goal was to get rid of all your cards.

As you can imagine, this simplistic game was popular if only because you got to say, "Bullshit." Some of our teachers didn't like this language, so we'd say "Bull" instead, muttering the second part under our breath.

In junior high, it was still the reign of vinyl. If you were lucky enough to have a class in the music room, you were allowed to play records during these "parties." I was extremely popular the day I brought in H2O by Hall and Oates, the one with "Maneater" on it. Even Lance Albertson, the popular, funny guy I had a crush on, paid attention to me that day.

The last day of school was always a bit bittersweet. I was happy for classes to be over and looking forward to summer vacation. But I also knew it meant I wouldn't see many of my classmates for several months. I spent much of my summer riding my bike around town, going to the swimming pool or hanging out with my brother.

They were long, languid summers filled with greenspace, reading, family vacations. But in the fall, part of me always looked forward to returning to classes, to returning to new challenges.

And perfecting, of course, my "Bullshit" abilities.

Copyright 2003 by Alyce Wilson

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