Retrospect: Desk cleaning, part 0

Self-tutoring about people and events of the past: the tutor reflects.

A few weeks after I arrived to a big new school in April, grade 4, in the Annapolis Valley, a track meet was scheduled one afternoon. After lunch, we were meant to bus about three miles away to attend it. Likely it was mid-to-late May by then; I recall the day was bright and sunny. Most kids were excited to get out of the classroom and head to the track meet, whether to participate or spectate and socialize.

I wasn’t in track and could anticipate that the meet wouldn’t be a social opportunity for me. Our teacher said anyone who didn’t want to go could stay back and help her in the classroom. She was the one who read the Bible to us every day after lunch. I elected to stay, not knowing what she wanted help with. Heath did as well, and that’s how we became friends, but that’s for another post.

After lunch, nearly everyone left class to board one of many buses which we heard rumble away. The school, normally hosting 700 kids, was suddenly almost empty. Its unnatural quiet seemed at odds with the bright sunshine outside.

“Well, let’s get to work,” the teacher began. Believe it or not, she told us to start cleaning out the students’ desks! (In that class, we had desks with storage underneath the desktop where you could keep books, school supplies, etc.) The teacher started at one aisle. Heath and I were meant to each pick one as well, then start going through its desks one by one to remove garbage and neaten them up.

Sitting here, I laugh, because this premise is absurd nowadays: I don’t imagine one could even conceive it today. With privacy rights, etc, established from such a young age, how could one kid be tasked with going through another’s things, deciding which to throw out? Yet, that’s just what we did.

Keep in mind that the teacher was likely born around 1910, and time moved pretty slowly in the Valley. Moreover, I’m old: this incident happened decades ago.

Heath and I were both a little eccentric ourselves, so sensitive about throwing out other people’s stuff. We asked her what she thought of as garbage.

“Crumpled paper that’s obviously not going to be handed in,” she responded. Really, she was quite gentle in how she went through the desks. Nonetheless, she would comment, in near whispers, “I just hate mess!” or “Oh – so messy!”

Definitely there was a cultural fear of mess among many there and then. I think they saw mess as a loss of control. For people whose reference frame was still that they lived in the British Empire, giving up control was off-putting, so mess, intolerable.

There is much more to discuss about that situation, so I’ll continue about it in one or more following posts.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.