Memories of elementary school are scarce indeed, yet second grade (known as Grade 2 in Canada) at St. Patrick’s School, will always stand out for me because of two very different incidents.

St. Patrick’s School was aptly named because of its location on the border of the city of St. Catharines and the small town of Merritton in Ontario, known for its Irish immigrants. My classroom looked out onto the playground and, if you looked further in the distance, you could even see my house, across the main thoroughfare called Glendale Avenue. The school sat at the bottom of the Niagara Escarpment, protected in a way by the hill, and so it felt like a safe place to be.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, it was to be my last year at that school, because our family moved into a bigger house on the other side of town during my third grade year, and I would then attend a school called Christ the King. I don’t remember who my teacher was that second grade year, but I’m pretty sure she was not a nun. Two things happened that year at St. Patrick’s school which made it memorable in my books.

The first was the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963. If you were around at that time, you probably remember that many people were enthralled with both Jack and Jackie, including my parents, even though we lived in Canada. It was a fairly normal day, until the early afternoon, when a knock on the door interrupted our studies. It was the principal, who was a nun, and she told the class that President Kennedy had been shot and that we needed to get down on our knees and pray for him. Our desks were in the traditional format, about five rows of six each, and those thirty kids were on their knees in a heartbeat, reciting the prayers of the rosary. The memories are vague after that but the memory of that knock and those prayers will stay with me forever. I know I was shocked and sad, but being seven years old, it was all a little hard to understand.

The second incident couldn’t be more different. While my parents were taken with the Kennedy’s, I was also influenced by action south of the border, namely the Mickey Mouse Club and one Annette Funicello. According to Wikipedia, she was the most popular Mousketeer, and in 1963, she would have been 21 years old and in the process of making her first beach party movie with Frankie Avalon. As a second grader, I knew her as the Mousketeer, and I wanted to be her. So much so, that on a test paper where it says NAME at the top, I put Annette. When the papers were being handed back, Annette’s was saved until last. The teacher said, “And who may I ask is Annette?” (as if she didn’t know). I raised my hand, she returned the paper, and then proceeded to give the class a lecture on the fact that if you wanted to change your name, you had to go to court to do it. Totally unnecessary and showed no imagination, in my opinion.

© 2010, kimmanleyort. All rights reserved.

Tags: Annette Funicello, Kennedy assassination, memoir writing, Mickey Mouse Club, second grade

This entry was posted on September 2, 2010 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Kim, Memoirs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.