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“When I think about it, oh, I am really sad—for about 30 seconds,” a teacher recently confessed to me.  We were talking about the impending end of the school year.

Actually, that pretty well sums up how most of the students feel about it too; at least, that’s how I remember it.

From the elementary grades through high school, the end of the school year was always the same. I was sad about saying goodbye to my favorite school activities, like art, reading, music, recess, and the noon hour.  I would miss seeing my friends every day, and most years, I would even miss my teachers.

But any feelings of sadness were quickly replaced with a welling up of anticipatory joy for being set FREE!  I could imagine what prisoners and indentured servants might feel when told that their shackles would be unlocked and their prison doors would be opened in early June.

Yes, the last day of school—Independence Day for Students—was always cause for celebration.  It meant freedom from structured days, fractured fractions, long division (carry the 1), algebraic anomalies like, If A+ B=D, what did you do with C?

It was emancipation from term papers, science reports, and pop quizzes.  It was “time out” from the embarrassment of being called upon to give the correct answer to a question when I hadn’t yet read the chapter, or from fear of getting caught passing notes to my best friends, Sharon, Betty, and Marsha.

On the other hand, I did miss our recess and noontime marble games in elementary school.  Since they were considered a form of gambling, they were strictly forbidden—which only added to the excitement surrounding these surreptitious competitions.

I lost a few, but I also won some real beauties, like an emerald green cat’s eye, a milky two-tone agate, several speckled boulders, as well as some shiny new steelies.  In fact, my marble bag was literally bulging by the end of fourth grade.

Ah, but the “lazy, hazy days of summer” were coming, bringing with them backyard circuses, playing jacks on the shady part of the sidewalk, and playing with paper dolls on blankets spread out on the front lawn. Admittedly, with the end of school came extra chores at home, but it also provided the gift of leisure—time for treasure hunts in the gravel pile, reading Nancy Drew books under the lilac bush, and jumping rope and hopscotch.  As a family, we would enjoy fishing and camping trips, picnics, and drive-in movies.

But, before the end of school, before summer vacation could come, we students had certain year-end rituals to complete.  In reality, the end of school was not just the last day, it was the whole week leading up to it.  Known by both students and teachers as Countdown Week, it went as follows:

MONDAY – It was our last chance to turn in workbooks, late projects and reports.  We also had to return all library books, which usually required a search-and-rescue mission at home– crawling under the bed and into the closet to seek out that which was lost.

TUESDAY – We returned our text books.  Having eliminated any defacement by vigorously applying our Pink Pearl erasers, we thusly prepared them for the next year’s recipients.

WEDNESDAY – We were required to bring a shoe box and large paper bag to take home the contents of our desks and/or lockers.   In the front of the classroom would be waiting a bucket of warm sudsy water with the same pungent antiseptic smell associated with freshly cleaned toilets in the school bathrooms. Next to the bucket was a pile of cleaning rags.  From the first grade on, we knew the routine.  We would leave behind well-scrubbed and polished desks.

THURSDAY – On Field Trip Day we traveled to a nearby place of adventure, usually a city park. The bus ride to and from, being the real adventure—bubble gum tangled in long hair, spit balls materializing out of thin air, lunch pails forgotten, all accompanied by loud school chants and songs.

FRIDAY – The Last Day ended at noon, anticlimactic and bittersweet, its sole purpose was for us to pick up our report cards and sign each other’s autograph book and/or yearbook.  Even now, the sweet smell of lilacs permeates my memories of the last day of school, since a last-day lilac offering to a favorite teacher completed the End of School ritual for another year.

I also remember that the last day of school was often gray and drizzling, but the next day the sun would shine.  I would set the alarm just so I could turn it off and go back to sleep—with a smile of course, remembering that SCHOOL’S OUT!