Fluoride in a School That Isn't

I have been thinking about elementary school today. I don't know why, but I've been thinking about the eerie feelings of my school and how it is now shut down; the ghostly echos of the children who once ran around, who had piloted their learning at this school, is no more. It is SO scary to think about.

Thinking about this makes me think about other events that occured while I was there. Memories.

I remember the first time I ever missed school. I was in Pre-Kindergarten. My grandmother had passed away. The teacher had said it wasn't a problem. The children were going to listen to studies on headphones. I could make it up the next day. The headphones were a bluish grey and white and stiff. I remember sitting against the wall, listening to whatever it was we had to listen to, thinking about my grandma, not really grasping the idea of death, let alone school.

I also remember my first "bad grade." It was also during Pre-K. I remember it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. Probably the first time I felt bad about myself, too. I was so scared to bring that worksheet home. My mom had seemed so stern. Now that I think about it, I remember her face looking upset, but her mouth almost ready to smile. I bet she thought it was really cute. We put that worksheet up atop the refrigerator. It didn't go on the wall like my other assignments. I'd walk past that towering yellow appliance and shudder at the fact that such an ugly thing was sitting up there. My teacher's handwriting had looked so mean and fierce. If I remember correctly, there was a sad face at the top of that worksheet.

And then of course, I was reminded of the showers. The shower room was so terrifing. It was connect to the girls bathroom by a big wooden door. They were never used by us before, but even as a little girl, I would always wonder, "Who used these showers? Who were these little girls, and why did they need to shower? We never needed to shower." That big wooden door wasn't always open, either. On occasion, we would sneak in from recess to play that "Bloody Mary" game (the one with the mirror and saying it over and over again or something). Sometimes that door would be open. We would peek in, seeing the marble shower stalls, the janitor's mop. Other times, Bloody Mary would just end up chasing us around the playground.

There was also fluoride day. How scary and institutional was fluoride day? It made me sick. Arriving at school, I would often forget what day it was. It was just like every other day. Get off boss #4, and the later later years, bus #12, play outside until the first bell rang, climb up the marble stairs, creek across the hardwood floors, and then finally sit in the pink, metal desks with the wood chair and glazed wooded surface. But then the teacher would say it: "Line up for fluoride! It's fluoride day." Eeeew gross. It would always slip my mind! Our class would line up and walk down the stairs to the basement of the school, where the cafeteria was located. We would see the school nurse and the trays of pink liquid and plastic dixie cups. I can almost smell it now: a sicky sweet bubble gum smell mixed together with the leftover smell of the previous day's school lunch. As the line moved on past the trays, we would each grab a cup. Sometimes another class would already be in the cafeteria, swooshing away. "Just wait a minute, second graders," the nurse would say to us. Our teacher would file out of the cafeteria and stand in the hall and converse with the other class's teacher. No fair. We were trapped, holding our cups of doom. Oh how I hated fluoride. Sometimes I would just sit there, with that bubblegum crap sitting in my mouth. It was just too gross to move it around. I don't know if it was the taste, or standing next to a bunch of little kids swooshing and how we would hear the nurse count boldly and loudly and say, "ok done" and then see every kid spit out their fluoride back into their cups at the exact same time. How we would file out of that cafeteria and toss our smashed, spitty pink cups into a big garbage can.

I could go on and on about some of the weird stuff that went on during my first years of school.

But for now, the weirdest, scariest thought is that NewportSchool is no more. That makes me so mad.



p.s. Oh Great...