David Valcourt:
CLASS OF 1972
Seattle Country Day SchoolClass of 1972
Seattle, WA
David's Story
I was in love with Sheila Dunkle, Holly Smith and Sarah Bassett. Due to familial social connections and carpool expediency, I ended up spending alot of time with Holly and Sarah, but I had such a terrible crush on Sheila that I could hardly even speak to her. One talk below the stairs, probably on her first day, was enough to convince me that I just wasn't in the same league as this seemingly perfect creature. Actually, she was a very nice little lady. I just hope I wasn't too awkward or embarrassing, but to be fair we were only about 8 at the time.
My best friends were Luther Martin and then later, John Rogers, we skipped grades together. Somebody evil put a toy I had brought into Luther's pack on his last day - he was moving. He was probably the best friend I ever had, and this mean "frame-up" fairly ruined our last farewell. Luther my friend I miss you, if you are still out there PLEASE get in touch! I am pretty easy to find.
I also remember Lance and Larry, Joe, Phil and Jim, and a nice girl named Carol, who wore turtleneck sweaters and at that time was known as "Murph" because that was practically all she would say. They used to call Dulce Frial "Duck" because she once brought a duck egg for lunch, or that's what they told me.
The teacher I originally rode with was Mr. Kaufman. Once when we all came outside I quickly made a snowball and threw it high into the air above us while he was talking, and it came straight down and lodged itself behind his glasses. Nobody thought it was funny except me and that was pretty darn embarrassing. I remember Nixon had recently won the election (I wanted Humphrey because I liked his name better) and The Time Tunnel was my favorite show. I had so much fun learning about American history and the Revolutionary and Civil wars. The moon landing was shown to us and discussed on the first day of school in the fall of 1969, probably the same day I first saw Sheila. I'm not sure which heavenly event had the greater impact on me.
(PS sorry Sheila, I'm just writing it as I remember it!)
At typing I spent every class "accidentally" unspooling my ink ribbon and and then rolling it back up, I hardly ever did any typing. And at "select a world leader and write a report about them" I was less than successful.
I remember many other people and lots of really nice times. Mrs. Beckman was an angel.
For some reason I thought the shaped logs that ringed the parking lot were Flintstone rockets and would fly if I could somehow figure out how to ignite them. On my first day, Lance chased me around the playfield at every recess throwing rocks at my feet so I had to keep jumping while I ran. This terrified me. Larry made him behave after that and they sought me out in my various "hiding places" and very kindly toned down their extremely highbrow conversation so that I could understand them. They both used to draw the weirdest cartoons I ever saw.
I remember eventually spending all my recess time at the upper part of the fenced area out back, occasionaly joined by one or another student curious to know what I was doing out there. I think we mostly talked about TV shows and practiced trying to sing the theme songs. Every once in a while we would wander into the church and check out the areas we didn't normally visit during the school day.
The first time I was in a class play I kept ruining it by delivering my line as "Their eyes were tut shite." Sheila was probably there, adding to my nervous excitement. Eventually I had to learn to sort of block out her presence in order to function at all. All through this time I was plagued by furious night terrors involving aspects of time and geometry.
I used to get earaches alot and kept bringing stuffed animals to school untill they made me stop. I was the first boy in my class to complete the multiplication table after 6 or 7 girls had already done so. They used to occasionally take me out of class to have me take a test one or two years ahead of where I was to see how I would do on it.
The Christmas bazar wa...Expand for more
s always a highlight and Rubella inoculations were not. I loved singing Christmas songs and singing for the plays we did. Winnie The Pooh, The Little Drummer Boy, As You Like It. Luther Martin and I had nearly identical singing voices and they meshed beautifully. I played Richard when we did "The Man Who Came To Dinner" at a nearby community playhouse. Larry and Joe (as Banjo) were both great in that. I was not.
I remember Cathy Soreano. JR Bray was a human calculator who would eat anything offered to him, and we quickly grossed ourselves out with that experiment and called a merciful halt to it. I don't think he was at SCDS for very long. Someone named David Martin (I think) convinced me that he was from Mars and kept me waiting weeks for a written version of the Martian Alphabet.
A boy named Billy who loved the Partridge Family ruined the toy robots I lent him and then shot a hole in our sliding glass door with my BB gun when he came over to visit. I nearly idolized a boy with long blond hair who played great harmonica and entertained us all during the time he rode home with us. I can't remember his name but he seemed to define "cool". I remember all of us going to someone else's house once, but I don't know why. I think we all stood around outside and waited and talked, for what seemed like hours. It was fun.
They placed fiberboard partitions between three of us who sat at the same table to keep us from goofing off. It seemed to help, and not much later, everyone got partitions.
One of the girls suprised me with a kiss when we were standing outside at the waterfront. Very cute girl with short hair, but unfortunately I don't remember who it was. I of course stood there blushing while she went back to her friends and they all thought that was pretty amusing.
Things ended on a sour note for me when we heard the storage cabinets had been broken into and chemistry supplies stolen. For some reason I convinced another boy that we should both pretend to be guilty if they brought it up. Sure enough, at the very end of the day an announcement was made, and he and I both began practicing our guilty act, darting nervous glances at one another and grinning like idiots.
Our performance was successful to the extent that they kept us both after school and questioned us for what seemed like hours untill they were satisfied that the story we both told about thinking it a good idea to pretend to be guilty even though neither one of us had any idea what had actually happened was true. I remember being suprised that we even had chemistry supplies in the building, completely unaware that there was a chemistry class for the older students. This might have been my last day at SCDS. My little sister was born around this time and we suddenly didn't have enough money to send me for the next school year.
My transition to public school was rough. I was way ahead of all the other students and the teachers were not willing to let me "work at my own speed". Consequently, I got bored and social activities became more important than learning. By the time curriculum caught up to me several years later I was hopelessly out of step, pointed in all the wrong directions, and because of the grade skipping I was as much as two years younger than everyone else.
The only bad thing about SCDS was that it may have ruined me for schooling in the public school machine I found myself in later. I never did figure out how to make that system work for me, I despised it, and of course things got progressively worse. Eventually I found myself in another positive educational environment (Ichthus Student Community) but by then I didn't know what to do with it.
Eventually, music became an overriding interest for me, and while it did make me happier it never resulted in any kind of financial success... maybe because I never expected it to. Anyway, what a wonderful school with an incomparably stellar student body, almost all of them bright sparks!
I miss all of you more than you could ever know. Take care,
-David
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