When I was a kid, my family lived on a street in Northeast Albuquerque with a cul-de-sac that backed up against Juan Tabo Boulevard and sat north of Copper by a block.

From 1973 to 1978, I was a student at Tomasita Elementary School, which was several blocks west of our street.

My memories of my life at this time are pretty thin for some reason. I remember there were many families with kids on our block, and that playing outside with the other kids was a key part of my youth. But I was also an introvert, so I know that staying inside was also a thing for me.

Still, I do recall some stuff that happened as part of my life as an elementary school kid.

1. School Play Days

Once a year, towards the end of the school year, regular classes were suspended so that all of the students could go outside and enjoy a carnival-like afternoon, where games and contests and festivities replaced reading and writing and math quizzes. In my memories of these days, there were snow cones and the golden sunlight of a summer afternoon, and lots of kids running and laughing, and the games were always fun to play. It was organized mayhem, but us kids loved it as an escape from a year of school routine.

2. That Time I Cut My Eyelid

My got a call to come to the school and to get me in the nurse’s office, because I had a gash over an eye that, fortunately, actually missed my eye. What happened? Of all things, at the end of a recess, I thought I’d try to make one last layup on the basketball court. At this date, the basketball backboard was mounted directly onto the vertical pole, and when I went for a layup, I was watching to see if the ball went in. And I smashed my face into the pole before me, with my eyeglasses in the middle, and the edge of a lens cut over my eye. I got seven stitches that day and was a novelty the next morning at school.

3. The Shoe Kick

Swinging on a swing set is fun, but what is more fun? Seeing how far you can launch one of your shoes by kicking it off your leg when your swing is peaking in your forward sweep. For a little while, shoe kicking competitions were a thing on a few of the swing sets that were less in view of the teachers watching recess. It was a pride thing. You just launched that sucker as far as you could into the broad and empty ground to the west, and it was between you and your opponent as to who had the best launch. The downside of these competitions was that the bulk of the surface of that playground was dirt and tiny gravel, and in some seasons, peppered with sharp goat heads, and you always had to go get your shoe after you launched it. I don’t remember many kids getting pegged by a shoe missile, but I do remember a lot of dirty socks, and being told to stop playing that sport.

4. Square Dancing

I don’t fully remember why we did it- if it was just a section of our Physical Education class or what, but I clearly remember some time being given for a week or two to learn how to square dance, and then, if that wasn’t bad enough, we got to share what we learned at a Parents Night at the school!

5. The Principal

I had pretty good familiarity with Tomasita’s principal, because, well, he was my neighbor. Mr. Hazen lived with his wife and kids next door to us, and while I was younger than Brenda and Annette, I was often playing with Mike with the other younger kids on the street.

6. That Time I Fell Out of the Car

One Saturday morning, my dad got in the car to go run an errand and I joined him, sitting in the front seat on the passenger’s side as a rare treat. I guess I thought I was more mature because of it. To leave our neighborhood, you usually had to do a horseshoe turn to get out on a road that would get you onto Juan Tabo, and it bent a little to the left. Well, halfway up that road, my dad did something he did from time to time to make sure the car was safe- he would open and then re-close his door to make sure it was shut securely. This morning, I decided to copy him. Well, at that time, car doors were made of more and heavier metal than they are now, and I never got past the “slightly open the door” part of the maneuver. Although we were moving at a slow speed, gravity pulled the unhatched door open, and pulled little me out of the car with it, plopping me onto the asphalt beneath it. I had some cuts and abrasions, but they were not bad enough, because once I was looked at and back in the car, my dad drove us on to the store.

7. The Flurry of Papers

I just remember leaving on one of the last days of school, and the parking lot in front of the main building was a sea of notebook papers from kids opening their binders and letting their papers be free. And a good New Mexico wind helped move the papers out of the schoolyard and onto the street and yards of houses beyond it.