In Grade 1 at Keys School, I could walk to school along Laurier Avenue without my brothers. They took off on their bikes to find their own friends, other big kids in grade three and grade five. I had my own friends then, Susan and Laura, Judy, Janice, Jennifer, Jody. I had so many friends. During the summer, Charlotte with the hearing aid who had wet her pants in kindergarten had moved with her family to Pinawa in Manitoba, and I lost touch with her.
Some kids had learned to ride a bike during the summer but I didn’t have a bike yet. Aching with desire, I watched them speed past me, knowing they would park their bikes in the bike rack behind the school, and take the best places for skipping, or playing scrub softball, or rolling the colourful glass marbles we called alleys. Instead, I trudged through the smell of poplar bark and the crisp whisper of fallen leaves in the ditches.
In winter, snow fell deeply, plowed into banks along both sides of the road. We wore snow pants, thick coats with hoods pulled over our touques, a double layer of mitts, our faces wrapped in scarves. We pulled brown rubber galoshes over our school brogues, and fastened them tightly at our ankles with a silver metallic buckle on a strap. We breathed out wisps of mist, our icy dragon’s breath. Then we ran along the tops of the snowbanks, imagining ourselves climbing mountains, sometimes remembering to watch for cars at the intersections where out snowbank pathways met the streets. In grade one we stayed in school all day, dismissed at 4 pm. It was already getting dark on the walk home in December, even darker on overcast snowy days. We walked in groups, playing, chatting freely, unleashed from classroom rules and silence.
On snowy days, the big boys started snowball fights, hiding behind bunkers they had dug behind snow banks, one group of friends or rivals on each side of the street. They waited in ambush. When the girls came up, they pelted us. One hit me in the face, snow dripping down my forehead, into my eyes. I erupted, took off after the gang in the direction of their bunker. The boys fled, but I was long legged and fast, and Gary was short. I caught him, I pushed him down into the snow, rubbing his face in the snowbank, I spanked him with the gym shoes I was carrying home to be washed. He was crying when I stepped back and let him stand up. He walked off bawling feeling sorry for himself. His friends had all gone. I did not feel one bit sorry. I felt liberated and strong.
After that, the girls all walked in a huge group with me until we got past the area of the snowball bunkers, and the boys left us alone. (490 words)
Janis