Counting down...

I never read the book Whatever I need to know I learned in Kindergarten or whatever the heck it's called.  I think I've pretty much gotten the gist from the name alone, never mind that period when it first came out and co-workers at temp jobs would quote it incessantly - "share your crayons, play fair, eat a good snack" - cute, very cute.  I remember isolated events from kindergarten.  They mostly involve my earliest nemesis, Eddie Deeb.  I remember Eddie chasing me under a table and kissing me, then pinning me down on a couch at a friend's birthday party as soon as the dad left the room.  He was creepy and aggressive with the early energy of a frat boy with bad boundaries.  I admit to being thrilled when someone posted pictures from our 20th high school reunion and his cute kid chunky had turned to flab and he had a strange baldness pattern I'd never seen before.  Karma.

I occasionally catch a whiff in a stranger's perfume of my first grade teacher, Mrs. Hudson, who was tall and black and always had on a great 70s matching outfit and I am transported back.  First grade feels like fantasy camp.  I have a strong memory of making a paper-mache koala bear for a project on Australia and randomly studying Lapland in second grade.

But third grade?  I remember third grade.  I remember the cliques, the social pressures, the crushes, the humiliations.  I remember realizing in third grade that school mattered and that these were people I was potentially going to have to deal with for a long time.  I remember learning cursive and feeling the sides of my brain click together.  I remember thinking the cool jocks, Amy Loder and Patricia Frazier, were laughing when I couldn't climb the rope to the ceiling of the multi-purpose room.  Third grade is when people were in or out, when alliances shifted, when I began to feel sadness, lonely, left out.  Third grade is when our parents would drop us off somewhere for a little while, then pick us up.  When we began to touch our toes into an independence that was delicious and scary and non-refundable.

In five days my daughter begins third grade.  She is only doesn't turn eight until the end of October and in this era of ubiquitous red-shirting, is younger than most of her classmates.  She just lost her first few teeth this summer and while at the top of her class academically, she is developmentally young.  I don't think she's had a real crush yet.  When the cool boy who skateboarded and raced BMX bikes and was over a year older than her moved in and started gifting her barrettes and stuff animals, I waited to feel her early crush energy.  Didn't feel it.  Might she be hiding it from mom?  Possible.  But some kids just don't feel it so early.  I was eying Jason Zappa across the room long before third grade.  My husband doesn't remember registering girls til middle school.  This is one of those areas where I long for my daughter to take after him.

I watched the third graders last year, even led a community circle group to help them build a strong team and learn to listen to each other and solve conflicts.  It was not easy.  Each child was a massive bird's nest of feelings and longings and confusing growth spurts and yes, hormones.  Some of the girls wore their hair long and let it fall in their faces as they read sophisticated novels and snorted at the antics of boy trying to annoy/attract them.  The developmental age range was stunning.  The glimpses of impending adolescents popped out in attitudes and insecurities.  This was no sweet little second grade.

Lying in bed last night, I asked S how she felt about starting third grade (and surreptitiously recorded it on my phone):
- I'm nervous.   Something terrible could happen.  I mean, I don't think anything terrible will, but it could.
- What could happen that is terrible?
- Just like, you don't know what could happen.  I mean, anything could happen.  Well, maybe not anything...maybe I'm taking that I little too far.
(I laugh, she continues)
- But still, a lot of things could happen.
- Like what?
- I don't know (silly tremble in her voice)
- Okay.
- Like, um, I don't know.
- It's exciting though too, huh?
- I know it is.
- You're going to learn how to write in cursive.
- I'm excited about that.
- And there's a whole wall in the classroom for your math.  And you'll probably do a lot of science.
- I love science.

We grow quiet after that, perhaps thinking about how we both find science captivating, though while the fact that there is so much still unknown seems to make her feel powerful, it leaves me a little befuddled.  Perhaps it's harder at 41 than at 7 to accept how little you actually know.  It feels like I should have a few more answers by now.

This blog will chronicle the third grade year of a girl on the west side of Los Angeles, growing up with a tv writer dad, a blogging therapist school activist of a mother, and a cultural landscape vastly different from the one I knew.  Juxtaposing it with my own third grade year, perhaps we'll learn something about 1979 vs 2012, about growing up on the east coast vs the west, about how technology affects the year about which teachers universally say, "oh that's the big one."  Everyone seems to agree that third grade is the major year when social rules change, academics leap forward, the achievement gap almost instantly widens, and cute little second graders begin to show deeper signs of the people they will be in the world.  I remember terrible things happening (that in retrospect weren't so terrible) and I watch my sweet little daughter falling asleep with thumb in mouth and lamby in hand and breathe through the worry.  She is ready for third grade.  I am ready for third grade.  Or are we?  Either way, here we go.