SO, HOW'S SCHOOL?

Forty-nine years ago; actually, it was October 4, 1969, my husband Arnee and I went on our first date. We both still remember what he said to “break the ice” when we got into his father’s car, which he had borrowed. With an endearing smile, he looked over at me as he asked, “So, how’s school?”

Giving no real answer, but rather more of a simple nod, with zeal, I turned the conversation over to him and inquired what I thought would be a much more interesting subject, “How’s college?!” I had just started 11th grade, but he had begun his freshman year at Rutgers in New Brunswick. He lived on campus all week and came home for weekends. I was over the top about dating a college guy. 

All these years later, we had a good laugh when I read Social Q’s by Philip Galanes in the January 27, 2019, SundayStyles-The New York Times. The question asked by a 16-year-old about how to respond when someone asks her, “How’s school?” caught my eye. Galanes suggested that “‘How’s school going?’ is a wildly inventive and child-friendly variation on the empty greeting ‘How are you?’ It’s just filler.”

I was 16 when Arnee asked me, “So, how’s school?” as we sat in his dad’s 1961 red, 3-speed floor shift, Dodge Lancer (not quite as spiffy looking as the one off the internet shown in the above picture). Like the old car getting us to the drive-in movie theater on Route 22 in Union, the initial question Arnee asked has gotten us through nearly 50 years of wear and tear thus far. It’s all a matter of interpretation, I suppose.

His concern was appreciated. So much so that it gave me the opening to send love letters to him, which I wrote while sitting in class during the next two years of high school. In hindsight, it seems shocking that I graduated with the amount of time spent writing those letters instead of paying attention in class. After all, however, he did ask me, “So, how’s school?”

Someday, I’ll scout out those written memories, still holed up in a shoebox in our attic, and write another book. Stay tuned for my detailed firsthand account of high school in Elizabeth, New Jersey, from back in the fall of 1969 through the spring of 1971.

Sharon and Arnee, in November 1972, at his parent’s house on Pennington Street in Elizabeth, N.J.…at this point I was already a sophomore commuting to Rutgers-Newark and Arnee was a senior, living off campus at Rutgers-New Brunswick. His mother made my sweater-vest.