Recess

Who didn't love recess? Because my elementary school was K-8, I was able to have recess until I graduated from 8th grade. Many of my neighborhood friends got "cut off" in middle school. I felt sorry for them. Recess was the best part of the school day!

I stayed pretty consistent with my group of friends through elementary school. I don't remember much about recess when we were young, but I imagine it contained a lot of playground time. Except I never went on the swings. They made me sick. I was more of a slide kind of girl. Mostly we just kind of ran around, though. We played tag, hop skotch, and jumped rope. Recess was all about taking a much needed break from learning reading lessons and math problems.

One thing I do remember about my younger years are the "recess weddings".  Everyone had those, right? Two kids in the class would decide they wanted to get married, and we'd all participate. The bride would march across the field and there'd be the groom, anxiously waiting to put Ring Pop on her finger. Or there was that one time a kid stole his mom's ring and tried to use that for his bride-to-be. He totally got in big trouble for that.

Recess started to change when we were in 5th grade. It wasn't really that cool to "play" anymore. So instead we'd lean against the school and talk. The boys would play sports and we'd watch, although some of the braver girls would jump in and play with them.

Middle school took a turn. It was always drama filled. Someone was mad at someone else, someone had their heartbroken, so and so didn't answer the note so and so wrote them in English class. Drama, I tell ya. Looking out on the field you'd see boys running around playing some kind of sport and girls in groups of 5-10, sitting in circles, talking. My crew was always on the lawn when it was nice outside, in our uniforms, pulling grass and chit chatting about the day's events. Rumors flew during recess. Did you hear that Katie kissed Matt? Ew! We were so preoccupied with gossip. It was all we knew.

In 7th grade, I took on a new duty at recess- Kindergarten watch. This was set up so that the kindergarten teachers could eat lunch between the morning class and afternoon class. A group of 7th grade girls would greet the little ones as their parents dropped them off, help them get all their stuff in their cubby, and do an activity with them until the teachers came back. It took up our entire recess period, but was actually quite fun. There wasn't as much drama when you were reading a book to a 5 year old. I loved doing that, and remember being super freaked out in later years when I realized they were old now and going onto high school. Somehow I just thought they'd always stay little.

There came a time in 8th grade when suddenly, we had all these couples in our class. It was weird. It was like they just decided to pair off, out of nowhere. It was hard to keep up with who was "going out" with you. You'd see the couples holding hands walking around the football field, and the rest of us talked about how stupid it was, not wanting to admit that we wanted that too. Although, looking back, it IS pretty stupid.

I actually particularly enjoyed "indoor recess". It was especially fun in 8th grade. Most of my friends were in my homeroom. So indoor recess meant we marched from the cafeteria back up to our homeroom and pulled our desks together. Most of the time, we played cards, spoons being our favorite. Other times we'd write each other notes or do homework. But mostly, we played cards. And we had a blast doing it.

Overall, recess was fun. I wish we had a "recess" at work, although I suppose our lunch hour is our version of recess. We all eat together and try not to talk about work.

Did you have recess? What kinds of things did you do?