Safety Patrol

11 Feb. 2013

 School Safety Patrol

Contrary to what people might surmise,  I was not a life-wasting sluggard in elementary school.  I was, however, a bit of a slacker;  my natural shyness made me uncomfortable when not flying under the radar and most likely I realized I was smart and had no compulsion to regularly bring it to everyone's attention.  My greatest fear was that somebody would think that I was showing off.   In fifth grade Miss McDaniels had a seating arrangement based on academic achievement which changed with each grading period.  I was usually the first or second boy;  and the sixth or seventh student because unlike the boys, the girls actively competed for good grades.   It was therefore a huge shock when I was selected for a slot on the School Safety Patrol; one of 4 in the class and 8 in the grade.   This started my tradition of service, never volunteering but somehow always ending up  in hall monitor type positions.  Apparently teachers felt they could trust me to carry out an assortment of authoritarian duties, or at least trust me more than the available alternatives.

(not me but certainly representative of the look)

I may have subconsciously wished to be selected to the Safety Patrol but I didn't consider it a remote possibility.  So I was both honored and shocked, and most of my classmates puzzled by this development.  I enjoyed my two years wearing the white Sam Browne belt and the AAA badge,  and don't recall anything especially traumatic occurring during that time.  

The best part was learning how to roll up the belt so that a loop was hanging out that you could thread your pant's belt through.  It would hang on your side and you could wear it throughout the school day, while basking in what for me was an unfamiliar prestige.  The older kid that I was replacing handed down his belt to me after teaching me the proper way to roll it up.  I did the same when it came time to pass my belt on to my successor,  funny the things we remember.

I believe that my OJT was done by tagging along with Becky Zeckman for a few of her shifts.

Osborn was a neighborhood school,  there were no school buses; I think there is something wonderful about this arrangement and it is fast disappearing as schools become consolidated.  We had five patrol posts; two in front of the school and the others several blocks away in three different directions.   We rotated these each day (or maybe weekly) as we did mornings vs afternoons.   The ones in front of the school were much harder duty.  I preferred the one on Cleveland Avenue because it was the furthest from my neighborhood and I got to know kids with whom I would otherwise have little interaction.

The reward for our service was a Saturday bus trip to a Cleveland Indians' game, with school patrol members from every elementary school in town

I'm discovering that one of the benefits of blogging is that it triggers hidden memories,  in this case something came trickling to the surface early this morning as I drifted in and out of sleep.  The county AAA people had supplied the school with high end yellow raincoats with the safety patrol crest.  The coats hung down almost as far as a western duster and they had attached hoods.  So if you wore the standard buckled rain boots of that era and the raincoat,  you could stand around in the rain without anything but your face and hands getting wet.  The coats were stored in the school and we would get them before going to our respective intersections. 

As I recall these raincoats made standing out in the rain kind of fun except when the temperature was just above freezing.   Unfortunately you could not wear them home. 

Manning a distant patrol position probably appealed most to me because while it was a social activity, it was also one of the few things during elementary school that provided time alone for contemplation.  There was always a period at the start and finish when you were by yourself standing on the curb at the cross walk, and of course there were times in between with short breaks in the action.  It provided interesting contrasts what with the frequent juxtaposition of frenzy with isolation. 

It was possible on good days to take your books (and in 6th grade my heavy trombone case) to your duty station and then go directly home at the appointed time.  But mostly we left them in the school and retrieved them when we went off duty. 

An especially tricky situation occurred on the day the high school gave a matinee performance of the annual musical (that year it was Brigadoon) and I drew lunch duty at the Edgehill-Liberty intersection, the one furthest from the school and the only one out-of-sight.  They had assured me that they would hold the bus for me but it didn't happen.  Fortunately my paranoia was rewarded and instead of going back to the school I cut through a few alleys and intercepted the bus on its way up main street.