For reasons I don't feel like explaining right now, I've been asked to fill out an official list of every school I've ever attended. The form is titled: Summary of Educational Experience - from the Beginning to the Present.
This is turning into a challenging - and oddly emotional - experience for me. I had a particularly itinerant childhood, and I can't actually remember what schools I went to. And it's a safe bet that neither of my parents will remember, either. So far, I've come up with ten schools, but there's a big gap between grades 3-6 that remains mysterious.
I skipped kindergarten, moving at age 5 to a tiny (current population, according to Google: 36) town in the far north of British Columbia with my father. He was teaching, in the two-room school, Grades 1-3 (the other lucky teacher got to handle 4-12, I assume). So I was plunked into Grade One. I only spent one year in Good Hope Lake, B.C., and my main memory of that time is that, even though we lived in a trailer that was actually attached to the schoolhouse, my father forced me to go outside in the mornings with the other kids, and our neighbor, the other teacher, had a big St.Bernard dog, that, though friendly, terrified me. I would run out the door in the mornings directly to the swing set, get on and swing, swing, swing to avoid being bowled over by that great, hairy monster.
I stayed one Grade ahead, one year age behind my classmates, at four or five succeeding schools, but in grade 5 - or was it 6 - it got hard. At one school, they threatened to beat me up. At the next, they ignored me, For A Whole Year. I remember coming home and, for the first and only time in my life, looking forward to going to bed.
So my mother took me out of Grade 6 and switched me to a different school, and put me back to Grade 5, in some kind of special accelerated program for smart kids. The only thing I remember about that school, besides the fact that the kids were nicer, and we got to read a lot of classics (I'm pretty sure I was introduced to Jane Austen that year) is that the school required the smart kids to join Toastmasters (this sick group where people get together and practice giving speeches). I remember being as terrified at this prospect then as I would be today.
After attending, oh, another 4 or 5 schools, I ended up moving back to Burnaby for Grade 10, at a new high school. Shortly thereafter, I met Efrem, who said something like "Hey, it's the Barn Swallow girl." Efrem, who would become one of my best high school pals and eventual platonic grad date, told me that he remembered me showing up at his elementary school, where in Toastmasters we were told to give a speech on any topic and I gave an - apparently memorable in its ridiculousness - speech about how much I liked the Barn Swallow.
I just emailed Eef - we were reunited last year on Facebook, that nebulous network that will bring the high school experience back to you both literally and figuratively - to ask him the name of that school. He wrote right back. It was Lochdale Community School, he said. And he thinks I came from a school called Westridge. "Does that sound right?" he asked.
Actually, the name rings a tiny bell, but the fact that Efrem remembers this and I don't, made me first sad and then suddenly happy. I have been thinking a lot lately about attachments, and nostalgia, and friendships, and how hard it is to hang on to people and how hard it is to let them go, except when it's too easy to let them go. I've done a lot of the latter in my life. But it gets me down deep when someone remembers me.
Oh, and I still think Barn Swallows are pretty fricken cool.
