A few weeks ago I went back to my elementary school for the first time in years. I live just a few blocks away from it, and I had heard that there had been a big push of new construction all over the school, to modernize it and make it a lot bigger and better. I had also been wanting to do this task, so I grabbed a thousand glass thingies from the east bay depot for creative reuse, and headed over for some big time nostalgia.



This was my elementary school. It wasn't very big, and it wasn't very poor, all things considered, but it was still an Oakland public elementary school in the early-mid nineties. So as glad as I am to have gone there, it wasn't that great.



I had the idea to drop a handful of these glass bits at each of the places in the school that was different. This was somewhat foolish, I soon realized, and the handful was downgraded to a much smaller handful, in the interest of having enough to adequately cover the monumental changes that had gone on in the last very-very-nearly a decade.

The first stop was the new secondary building (of three total main buildings. There was only one when I went there), and its immediate environs.



And so was my process for a while. Up until I had spotted this:



new jungle gym, and put the glass bits on it:



I had been somewhat aimless in this whole endeavor. And then I figured out what the substance of this task, and also the substance of the glass, really was. The glass was to be memories. Not mine, because I am old and can't remember much of my elementary school anyways, but the memories that these new kids are going to make here.



Of course, as I walked, I did start to remember real things from my time here. I remembered the teacher, Mr. Otsuka, and old man with an odd voice, whom all the kids made fun of, calling him 'Mr. Oatmeal'. I tried to get them to stop, but they wouldn't listen to me. Until we got the the second world war in history class, and he came in to tell everyone about his experience in an internment camp.



When I got to the upper field, I realized the enormity of the changes. The rows of old, broken down portable buildings were gone, the asphalt had been repaired, and the old metal jungle gyms torn down, replaced with new, sleek, urbane plastic ones.



The school garden, which had been begun in my 4th grade, had a swanky new gate



And was in a good state of general use, even though some of it was being renovated as well.



I saw in the corner, right up against the concrete of the freeway wall, the remains of one of the old jungle gyms.



This was the thing that inspired my nerdy friends and I to invent games and sports that were more interesting than the ones the jocks would play. I had bruises and scrapes from the metal, and knocked more than one baby tooth out on the sides, but its one of my fondest memories from the old school



Just past the garden used to be a huge, child-forest sized collection of old redwoods, brambles, ivy, and other things that grow along freeways. Inside it, if you could fit through, was an old cement slide, from even earlier in the school's history, that had never been torn down. Everyone over 3rd grade knew about it, and would sneak off during recess or after school to play on it with bits of cardboard. Its gone now, and a very pretty view of the lower school, and a future extension of the garden, is in its place. I dropped a handful of glass but forgot to take a picture.

Next to that is the forest-tunnel along the side of the freeway, which the 5th graders would tell the new 4th graders about every year. It was the place for the most badass kids, and the oldest. I heard a rumor that my friend Kyle had his first kiss in there one day. Now the entrance to the forest-tunnel is plain and open.



After all this, you'd think I might be sad, all the heady days of my youth paved over and modernized. But I'm not, not at all. The school these kids are going to go to is better funded and equipped, safer and more beautiful, and will be able to teach them more about the world in a better environment. Even the new graffiti is nicer.



So as I walked out, past a beautiful bush hidden behind some chain-link fence, and a bench where I deposited the last of my waiting memories, I am content, and hopeful for the future. Parts of the world are waking up, to the importance of public schooling, to the importance of urban gardening, to the importance of fun. This walk made me hopeful, int eh end, not nostalgic. Which is think is a pretty good thing.

Also my girlfriend wore the glass bowl on her head to cheer me up.