I dont read much of the mail that comes, except my bills, of ocurse, well, I dont even read some of those. I also get all these magazines for subscriptions I never signed up for  Ok, and Us, and all that crap. Well, I guess when I was sent a few ‘complimentary’ issues of Ebony, that was ok. Still, I’d probably never read  them.

When the Shady Hill News arrives, though, I pick it up and pour through it to see whats going on in the lives of my former classmates whom I attended school with from Kindergarten through 9th Grade.  Yes, I entered high school in the 10the Grade, this was the practice of a Shady Hiller who attended th school up through the 9the Grade. I know the school a has since gotten rid of the 9th Grade to afford their graduates a full 4-year high school experience.

What would  I have had, done differently, had I left Shady Hill in 8th Grade, and gone on to a full 4 yr high school experience? Would  I be all the wiser, more successful in life? I page through the Shady Hill magazine, looking for goings on with my sisters, brothers, my former classmates. Theyre always doing s much, seem to have many children, and live very sucessful productive lives. It’s for this reason I dont write in to tell what Im up  to, as it isn’t much.

I often dream about Shady Hill, for some reason, walking up that long path from the gym, (and it seems so much longer in the dream) to get to an 8th or 9th Grade building. These were small wood structures scattered about the campus, but placed close together ,like the small-knit community Shady Hill was. I’d pass the tether-ball court between the upper class building and look to the left where theres a path between them leading to Shop, where we learned woodworking, and the art studios where we were taught ceramics, painting and jewelry-making. There was a stream, down there in that low-lying area which would often flood with heavy rain. I remember catching frogs and tadpoles there

I remember in some dreams I’d enter the middle-school classrooms I’d never been in, in my dream this was actually the building where the 7th grade was housed, where we read books like ‘Lord of the Flies ( and were shown the movie, I was very disturbed by both) Watership Down, The Crucible, and where our teacher, suddenly one day drew the shades in the classroom so he could teach us Sex-Ed. From what I remember we started by him asking us every ‘bad’ word we knew, and wrote it on the blackboard.

But back to my dream(s). One wonders why one returns to some dreams, over and over.  I know that I dream of places and things that had a long and strong impact on my life. I remember dreaming about the green in the center of the school where the 9th graders would do the MayPole dance, the girls dressed in pretty white. Why would I keep wandering so, around this place, in my dream. The green was also the ‘home’of a Tortoise Shell cat,  I remember my sister telling me about her, and then  I finally saw her. All those wicked, dark colors. What a rareity. Now, I have one of my own. And there was a lilac bush theres whose scent was so strong once the suns of May fell upon it,and the bees would buzz through.

I remember the newer building that was built to house our math and Language classes, and the frigid Winter day it lost heat and we were sent home. Our cool, rockin’ science teacher who was so cute and played a guitar and had a ‘band’ with a friend of his and graced us with an on-campus concert. It was awesome.