"Snails, Nails and Puppy Dog Tails"

In our time we were stubborn, messy and troublesome. We were boys!

Forget math, this was the serious business of third grade.

Back in our early schooldays, seemingly not long after the discovery of alternating current, girls were too fear-inducing and aloof to allow for much familiarity with boys. They had their hopscotch and jump-ropes on the playground and their “Ring Around the Rosie” and they wore patent leather slippers and dresses and seemed happy with the congenial separation that kept everybody respectful but distant. They also enjoyed school.

We boys, on the other hand were mostly indifferent to pedagogy and only showed up at school because the law said we had to. Back then, there was no P.E. with its strict rules or adult supervision, so we’d dig up boulders and use them with sticks and pine straw to make “forts” from which we bombarded neighboring “forts” with cones and other non-lethal projectiles or just sit there and tell dirty jokes in the quiet space away from the teachers.

There’s more to the phrase “boys will be boys” and you’ll find it fascinating and below the paywall by becoming a paid subscriber to “Eat Your History”. The price is $7.00 per month for 52 big, weekly editions, discounted to $70 for a full year.