LIFE LONG YEARNING

 

Back when I was in school in the fifties and sixties, they had “Safety Patrols”. If I recall correctly, the Safety Patrols were 6^th grade kids. Maybe they were also “7^th graders”, but I recall they were “6^th graders”.  My sister was one when she was in the 6^th grade. They got a badge and when in “full dress”, they would wear a white belt with a diagonal strap that went across the chest and over the shoulder. The badge was then worn on the chest strap. The safety patrol would walk us elementary aged kids to our buses in a group and made sure that we got to the buses safely. (I wonder now what they thought, that we would get mugged or something on the way out to our waiting buses?) When the Safety Patrols weren’t leading us “little kids” to our buses and watching out that none of us got lost or attacked by some sexual predator (Hmmm, I don’t think there were any of those when I was a kid). At any rate, their “duties” mainly consisted of preventing the BIG transgression of running in the halls. If you got caught running in the halls and the ubiquitous saftey patrol would catch you, you had to go back and walk the whole distance you ran. At least for me, this was about as effective as writing on the black board 100 times “I WON’T CHEW GUM IN CLASS ANY MORE! When the omnipresent saftey patrols weren’t around, I’d run in the halls every chance I could, which was a lot (Heh Heh, it STILL gives me a good feeling that I got away with it so many times! Quite often, though,  a safety patrol would “go under cover” and if you were running in the hall they would stop you and whip out their wallet with the badge in it and nail you. I thought that was pretty sneaky! The problem as I saw it was that most, if not all, of the safety patrols got power hungry and it “went to their heads”. Hey, when or where else could a 6^th grade kid weld the power to make someone they caught running in the hall to “go back and walk”!  One time when I was in grade school I was running in the hall and jumped down a small set of stairs and was caught by Stanley Fox, who was the “Executive Head” of the whole school. He didn’t say a word and pointed and motioned with his hand which meant go back and WALK and go down the stairs. Most of the kids in my class were Safety Patrols, most that is, EXCEPT ME!  Gee, I just can’t understand why J  Hey, I’m sure one of the reasons was that I was always running in the halls just to see if I could get away with it and to be “defiant”. Another reason was I’m sure that I was hyper active and had ADD long before it was “invented”. I’m much better now thanks to “Better living through chemistry”. (Us older folks will  remember that was the old Dow Chemical saying in the 50’s and early 60’s). I’m sure if I was hypnotized or put under a “truth serum” by my psychiatrist that he would find out one of my repressed longings was always to become a safety patrol. Alas, I will never know the power of catching some kid running in the hall and making him “go back and walk”. Hmmm, I’m going to check on EBay, and if I can find one, at least if I can never become a safety patrol, I can at least wear the badge (in my wallet of course so I can entrap running kids in halls!)