Just Throw ‘Em In

While I was growing up, we moved a lot. Not far mind you—just from town to town, throughout Contra Costa County. Between birth and age eighteen, our family lived in Pleasant Hill, Lafayette, Walnut Creek, Alamo, Danville, San Ramon, Martinez, and Concord.

As for school, I attended Kindergarten at Oak Park Elementary in Pleasant Hill (no longer there), first grade at Happy Valley in Lafayette, second and third grades at Walnut Heights in Walnut Creek, fourth and fifth at Rancho Romero in Alamo, sixth at Vista Grande in Danville, seventh at Los Cerros in Danville, eighth at Valley View in Pleasant Hill (we lived in Martinez then), and all four years of high school at Las Lomas in Walnut Creek. In case you weren’t counting, that’s eight different schools.

Why all the moves? My mom. She’s always been a “grass is greener over there” person. Even after I moved away from home, my parents continued moving to other places even farther away, including Angel’s Camp, Jamestown, Murphy’s, Arnold, and Gardnerville, Nevada. And after my dad passed away in 1995, mom continued exploring, adding Altaville, Avery, and Westpoint, California, as well as Wyoming, Las Vegas, and even the Virgin Islands, to her resume.     

One of the—I suppose you could say “benefits”—of moving so often, was that we kept things cleaned-out. In fact, I realized later in life that my mom wasn’t, and isn’t still, what one would call a “sentimental person.” She threw stuff out. There are no gold star-laden tests, hand-print turkey posters, or macaroni collages cluttering up her closet. I think she does still have a resin “diamond” necklace that I made in fourth grade for her, but not much else that I know of. Even family photos weren’t off limits, as I once had to intervene when I found her tossing Kodak prints into the fireplace because we “had too many photos.”

Another benefit of moving so often was I learned to become fast friends (I mean “fast” as in “quickly”) with anyone next to me, whether sitting in class or otherwise. If you’re a parent wondering how best to accelerate your kids’ relationship skills, just yank them out of school every year and deposit them in amongst a new set of classroom chums. It’s a sink or swim experience to be sure, but fortunately, I managed to stay afloat long enough in the early years, to then develop the strokes necessary to carry me the entire distance.

I can imagine some perhaps reading this, thinking, “How awful; what insensitive  parents!” I believe, today, making kids change schools is generally avoided at all costs. Afterall, they might be traumatized; they might not be able to handle it!

Seriously, if you’re a parent who is perhaps dealing with making decisions about your kids changing schools, take a deep breath and relax. My parents never seemed concerned about moving and school changes, so while I may have been a tad bothered by it, I certainly wasn’t “traumatized” by the experience. They didn’t make it a big deal, so it wasn’t one to me, either. In fact, looking back on it, I’d say it was all a net-plus.

To this day, I love meeting and getting to know people, and enjoy conversations with just about anyone. Yeah, my wife, Peggy, rolls her eyes all the time because now I’m that (old) guy who talks to grocery clerks, waiters and waitresses, shoppers in line, or the guy (or woman) in the car next to me at the gas station.

Are you moving again? Are your kids facing a new class full of strangers? 

Just throw ‘em in. They’ll do just fine.