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The end-of-year outdoor blowout when class got canceled for a day of sack races, tug-of-war, three-legged races, and water-balloon tosses out on the field. Everybody went home sunburned and clutching a ribbon — even if it just said "Participant."
Every October, elementary-school teachers transformed their rooms — construction-paper pumpkins taped to the windows, black paper bats on the walls, stretchy fake cobweb in the corners, and the jointed cardboard skeleton grinning by the door. It was the classroom's yearly costume.
The great equalizer of elementary recess: a big red rubber ball, a diamond scuffed into the grass, and a game of baseball you played with your feet. The same ball did double duty for four-square and dodgeball.