The Recess Room

Most kids counted down to recess. I dreaded it.

I wanted to play more than anything. I wanted to be out there daring Tommy Laugousky to lick the frozen pole, swearing his tongue wouldn’t stick, and watching his face when it did. I wanted the cold Ohio air and the scraped knees and the whole ridiculous business of being seven and free for twenty minutes.

But when that bell rang, I didn’t go where they went. I went the other way.

The recess room was on the other side of the building. That detail sounds small. It isn’t. It meant I couldn’t see the playground from the window. Couldn’t even watch. It was bright in there, a lot of yellows and blues and reds, like somebody had tried hard to make it feel less than what it was. Smaller than the classroom. Quieter too, but not just in volume. Mentally quieter. No buzz, no twenty kids pulling the air in twenty different directions. Just me, sometimes one other student named Jack, and a half-circle table where we sat on the outside curve while Miss Weaver sat at the flat end.

Miss Weaver had a kind smile and patience I couldn’t appreciate yet. She never made me feel punished. She would spend the whole period walking me through spelling words again, rereading the same passage, saying the same thing four different ways, trying to find the one that finally clicked.

I don’t know why it didn’t click. I still don’t, not really. Nobody told me then. I just knew that everyone else seemed to have gotten a set of instructions I missed, and I was spending my recess trying to catch up to something I couldn’t even see.

The Sneak Out

Here’s the thing about having no recess. There’s nothing left to take from you.

I figured that out sometime around the middle of second grade. If they caught me, what were they going to do? Give me less recess? I already had none. The math was simple, even for me.

So I made a plan.