We are able to make weapons that fire accurately and remotely. We can launch into space like we’re taking a bus. We can split an atom. Why are we unable to make eyeglasses that stay clean? I know, oils from the face and blah, blah, blah. Don’t care. Just make some eyeglasses that clean themselves, please.
I began wearing glasses in my mid-40s in order to read. Soon I was wearing progressive lenses because my teaching career involved me holding books and referencing them while I was teaching. The constant motion of looking from the text to the class would have caused constant nausea if not for progressive lenses.
Here’s a thought process of mine…glasses dirty again, clean them, think of teaching, think of spring, think of stress at the end of the school year, think of one true sign we were getting close to the end. Most mornings when I drove to school I turned left to go down the road to access the parking lot behind the school. On the corner of that road were a couple of old lilac bushes. They were the traditional light purple blooms. When these showed themselves, I knew the end of the school year was that much closer.
And then, my mind would quickly flit to the words of a great epic poem. “When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d/And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night/I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.” These are the first lines from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” It was written as a personal response to Abraham Lincoln’s death.
Longfellow expressed his grief over Lincoln’s loss all the while glorifying the beauty of spring. Lincoln died on April 15th, certainly a time when varying blooms of spring would be present. My memory would then skip to second grade when I recited a poem in front of the PTA. It was my first experience with Longfellow’s poetry. The poem was “The Children’s Hour,” a lovely lyrical poem celebrating family and love. All of this in the two minutes it took me to drive down to the parking lot. My purpose is not to teach these poems to you, just merely to illustrate a thought process.
School is never far from my thoughts. I spent a large part of my life in schools. They were happy times in my life, though I know it wasn’t that way for everyone. If it was a rough time, I’m very sorry for that. Naturally my thoughts about school are likely to turn to music.
Most every year at the end of the last day of classes, I’d play the joyous song “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper just for my enjoyment. This was an anthem from my school days. “We got no class and we got no principles/And we got no innocence/We can’t even think of a word that rhymes.” Youth personified, much like the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.” “Teenage wasteland, it’s only teenage wasteland…we’re all wasted.”
There are many, many songs that reference school days and school daze. Another popular anthem is Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” “We don’t need no education/We don’t need no thought control.” For some reason these words seem especially timely. Enough said.
“Rock ‘n’ Roll High School,” a song written for a movie of the same name, features The Ramones singing “Well I don’t care about history/‘Cause that’s not where I wanna be/I just wanna have some kicks…”. Everyone should have fun in school. It should be a fairly carefree time of life.
Times have changed so much that a parody song that was wildly funny in the 1980s now seems distasteful. I once found the song to be very humorous and that was its intent. So much has happened in the ensuing decades that it isn’t as funny. It’s a song that was sung by a gal named Julie Brown. Look it up and decide for yourself. “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a G*#” is the title. Remember it was a much different time.
I’ve traveled through lilacs, spring, poetry, music, and school gun violence, all with an image of glorious spring flowers in my head. As always, I’m left with varying levels of thoughts. Most are positive, some are downright joyous. But there’s the sadness of the loss of classmates, former teachers, and former students. And the memory of a time of innocence that can never be replicated.
Stories Are For Eternity 