When I was in elementary school I attended a typical Suburban brick tract school built in the fifties with surrounding maples, playground and bicycle racks in the early 70's. There was the bus loop out front by the parking lot and the front lobby, office part. The big lunch room and gymnasium was in the front part too. off of that were two main hallways extending like a V from the front of the school with classrooms for Kindergarten through 3rd grade in one wing and 4th through 6th, the "big" kids in the other wing. So from Kindergarten through 2nd I was in the east wing. We had a "special" class too. There were enough of them to make up a class but they were bused in from several other districts each morning and were comprised of students from about 1st grade age to 6th grade age, all in one class.
Sometimes through those early years my class would be in the hallway for one reason or another, going someplace, etc. Maybe an assembly or just lunch. Occasionally the special kids would just happen to be in the hallway at the same time too. All lined up waiting, just like us. We got a pretty good look at them, quite often. Also, the funny sounding and sudden whoops and wails echoing down the hallway at any time during the day were hard to miss. Oddly this was always ignored by my teacher and the rest of the grown ups but all of my classmates and me always laughed when we heard a random blurt.
Even in Kindergarten, being just 5 years old I noticed a lack of any mention of them by my teachers, profoundly so, like they didn't exist. My class and all the others would be together in Gym sometimes and always at the assemblies and plays but the special kids class was never there with us. They always did things and had Gym class by themselves, apart from the rest of us. We were only two classrooms down the hall though and at recess time when we got to go outside on the playground the special kids were out there too. So recess was different, like a free for all. We all got to mingle then and knew all their names. Some of them smelled really bad but some of them were oddly cool in a weird sort of way.
Sorry for jumping in. I don't know why I put this here. Been walking around with all that for forty years now almost so I guess I just needed to dump it.
