I built a quick crude seesaw this week to show Nita something I was thinking about.  In my mind I keep going back to the newly built Saluda Elementary School of my youth.

We first graders started off at the old three-story school that was just over two blocks behind my house toward the very edge of the town of Saluda.  Several months into the year we moved to the flat-roofed new school that was for grades one through six.  It still exists.  Zigzagging I walked about two blocks in front and across from my house to get to it.

Stand in front of it and look left to see what was the first and second grade side that was interrupted by the office and cafeteria near the middle.  To the right was the slightly longer upper grades side.  It had big bathrooms.  Our toilet facilities were in room.

What I struggle to remember with precision is the exactness of the lower grades playground that stood behind the building.  In line with the very end of the building and Mrs. Boozer’s room on the back–my first-grade home–stood the first of two or three steel swings.  I think each had four seats.  The piping was big and secure.  My hands would not come close to closing around it.

I’ll say there were three swings.  What came next in line as one moved down toward the cafeteria that jutted out from the rear of the low-slung modern contemporary building was the merry-go-round.  It could probably hold twenty kids.  The fine dust that piled up around it swept over shoes in the manner of a ballplayer sliding into a base.

The last piece of equipment was the see-saw, if my memory is accurate.  Like the previous structures it was heavy steel and had long wooden seats.  That is where I learned to seesaw.

Let’s say Tommy Rankin was opposite me.  All we had to do was assume a normal middle position and hold on the upright handle bars.  Automatically we were nearly balanced.  I could jack him up by moving backwards to the tip of my seat.  He could counter and do me one better by daring to lean way back.  Slight nudges forward or backward brought immediate big aerial changes.

Seesawing requires finesse and is limited to two.  I think that is why some of us had trouble with it.  I could ride with a big kid or a smaller one but I had to be willing to push back in my seat or slide up.  My bigger or smaller partner had to work within parameters to make the whole ride work.

Sometimes a lack of patience or just plain meanness resulted in a hard bump down.  Likely I wasn’t smart enough or lacked a good partner to ride it in a pleasing way often.  Come to think of it, I think girls were the best seesawers.  Being smart and cooperative comes more naturally to them.

Those swing, merry-go-round and seesaw rides soon gave way to my passion for throwing balls in the space in between the lower grade wing and the play equipment. I can remember consistently being among the last of the boys from the football game to grudgingly go in, testing the endurance of the waiting teacher.

For various reasons I go back to what I did not not work hard enough on in my halcyon days: the perfect balance of a seesaw ride that allows two people to be suspended perfectly in the air riding safely above the Earth but not quite touching it.  (March 5, 2017)