Grandma Bee On-Line!
My Story:
| ~ LORD ROBERTS SCHOOL DAYS ~ |
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What I am thinking about tonight is my Lord Roberts school days. I started school at Lord Roberts but we moved to 4th and Commercial. I went to the school in Grandview. It was called Grandview Elementary or First Avenue, I’ve forgotten. Then we moved back to the same little house on Denman St. I continued to go to Lord Roberts until my father had a home built in Kitsilano where I went to Henry Hudson School. Both Lord Roberts and Henry Hudson still exist as schools.
Lord Roberts is only one block up the hill from Denman – on Comox Street. In the other direction, Stanley Park.
Me with our dog "Peter" at Stanely Park. >
We always seemed to live close to the school we attended and close to the ocean – until that flat on 5th Avenue. I’d be six years old starting at Lord Roberts, and was eight, nine and ten in the years following the school in Grandview.
It was in those years I played imaginary games in everything I did. If I washed or dried dishes the cutlery were people. The knives were men, the forks women, the dessert and soupspoons were older girls and the teaspoons were little girls. Guess I figured we could do without boys!
Andrea tells me she and her sisters did the same thing, except they made kings, queens and princes etc. out of the knives and forks. If I went to the store for vegetables and fruit I was a bird – arms outstretched, going to buy food for the yawning mouths in my nest.
Of course, I did silly childish things. One of my petticoats was so pretty I figured it would pass as a dress but a child came up to me ask me why I wore my petticoat. I was mortified. Once I fell and banged my knees. An older girl helped me up and was very comforting but the next time I fell and cried an older girl told me not to be such a baby. Very bewildering!
We played hopscotch and skipped. I quite often opted to turn the rope “forever” because I was ashamed that I couldn’t run in to start skipping. I had to be standing beside the big rope. I wasn’t any good at all at double skipping where two ropes were turned in opposite directions. Do girls still play this kind of skipping? We played jacks, too, and ball games. Having a ball that bounced meant you could play games with the ball against a wall going through a set routine of steps. We didn’t need to compete. Other wall bouncers played along side. The same game could be played bouncing the ball on the sidewalk. Cant’ remember the various steps we went through. Under our legs, hands behind back, clapping before catching – things like that. Later at Henry Hudson which had wide cement steps there was a similar type of game without a ball, involving hopping and jumping up and down the steps.
We also played line ‘games’ which would be organized by a teacher but my memory of them is vague. “Here Comes the Duke Ariding” was one, with one line advancing towards the other. There was another we got up on our own that had to do with capturing someone and putting her in prison where we could release her by running the circle we’d drawn around her, risking getting caught ourselves.
One feature of schooldays at Lord Roberts was fire drill. We’d all follow our fire drill and be marched down the wooden fire escapes onto the grounds where we’d stand at attention until the principal in his big voice, dismissed us or told us to go back to class. I was frightened of him! Once when I lost a pair of skates I went to his office to try to identify a pair. I was so petrified I could hardly look at the skates far less identify them. I never did get another pair!
When I was nine I had a ‘best friend’. From then on into high school I always had a ‘best friend’. I think I was the dependant type! In my shyness a best friend bolstered me.
Margaret Langley was my Lord Roberts ‘best friend’. She lived on Comox Street near the park. Her older sister told us one day how babies were created. I didn’t believe a word of it. For a long time I closed my ears to that particular fact. Even when I reluctantly had to admit to the “seed” and how it got in, I was twenty before I found out how the full-grown baby got out. One of my employers had been a nurse. She had a book full of illustrations some of them of births in the olden days.But, back at Lord Roberts School and English Bay, and Henry Hudson and Kitsilano Beach I was an innocent. I think I stayed an innocent longer than most. My mother was no help, too embarrassed to speak of it. Her main contribution was, “Stay away from boys!” Luckily I heeded her only while I was a shy, ugly ducking. Later she changed her tune and hormones did the rest or, perhaps none of you would have been born.
My sister Joan was born while we lived at 1047 Denman. I wanted a sister desperately. Donnie was such a pest and brat – who’d want another brother? But, dear grandchildren, I’ll go on to tell you what I remember of my first days of child-minding another time.Love Grandma B.
Betty McLean
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