Kooky reunion: 67-year-olds perform their 5th grade play

10/11/24 • 60 min

Does a 1967 elementary school magazine -- or a fifth grade school play -- still have value? Only if you’re looking for lost memories, new insights, and hilarity
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Somewhere in your home, you might have saved at least one treasure from elementary school. The question is: Why did you save it? The only way to find out: Hunt for your ancient objects and see what revelations they bring to your adult life.

At least that’s what Sally and I decided to do.

After I found a play and three copies of a school magazine that I had saved since fifth grade, we used the Interwebs to track down five other people who created those masterpieces with us. Then we made them revive their original roles in the play and read poems, jokes, and gossip from the magazine, all written when we were 10. They also shared some of their own elementary school treasures, before we determined the fate of everything we’d saved.

It might seem absurd for seven adults to go back to their fifth grade writings. Which is why partly why we did it. A little absurdity is a lot of fun. But here’s the surprise: we also had revelations about our lives, thoughts that would never have come to us if we left those objects unseen in the attic, waiting for someone to toss them.
Oh, and yes, I also saved my fifth grade class photo -- along with a photo of my classmate Nancy (Simms) Sofen, who joins us on this episode.

We hope our fifth grade gang will inspire you to start searching for your own elementary school friends. Then stage your version of our kooky reunion, where you just might get useful insights into who you were as children and how it affected you for the rest of your life.

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Does a 1967 elementary school magazine -- or a fifth grade school play -- still have value? Only if you’re looking for lost memories, new insights, and hilarity
- - - - - - - - -

At least that’s what Sally and I decided to do.

Have thoughts about this episode? Send us a text

Previous Episode

Ice-T: Never-heard 1991 interview

Hear the rapper and actor talk about crime, Hollywood, racism, and more -- before he was a Law & Order SVU detective and just after he created the metal band Body Count
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In 1991, Ice-T had just appeared in the movie New Jack City -- and his rap albums were defining what was then an unusual style of west coast gangsta rap.
That’s why I chose him as one of the top five rappers to lead off my book about hip-hop, Break It Down: The Inside Story from the New Leaders of Rap.

Since then, I couldn’t throw out the tape of my interview – which lasted well over an hour. But I hadn’t shared it with anyone, until now.
As I listened again, I remembered that Ice-T (whose real name is Tracy Marrow) is one of the all-time most amazing talkers. There was almost nothing I wanted to cut. So here it is, the interview almost in its entirety.

For me, it was surprising to hear Ice-T’s 1991 thoughts on topics that are still relevant. His commentary on Donald Trump was different from what it would be now. But our discussion of Clarence Thomas could have happened yesterday. We also talked about education, racism, poverty, crime, the police, censorship, fatherhood, politics, the army, Hollywood, and – of course – the origin of gangsta rap.

So much happened in Ice-T's life after our talk. A year later, he caused a national controversy when his metal band Body Count released the song “Cop Killer.” The song was banned and became an election talking point for the first George Bush and his vice president Dan Quayle. Later, Ice-T appeared in dozens of TV shows and movies – with his most prominent credit being 25 years on Law & Order SVU.

Most of all, this flashback interview reminded me of the sharpness and openness of Ice-T’s mind. And his strength, which helped him bounce back from losing both parents as a child and ultimately allowed him to leave his rough street life in South-Central L.A.

If you want more about Ice-T's current life, you’ll find links to articles about his wife Coco, his three kids, his exhibit at Harvard, his online bonding with Stephen King, his support of vaccination, his bulldogs, his podcast, and more on the I Couldn't Throw It Out blog.

Ice-T Photo by Sven Mandel via Wikimedia Commons

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Next Episode

Listen up! A Violin Lesson With Strings Attached

Inheriting a violin is wonderful. But what if it comes with instructions that it must be played? And you resorted to violence as a kid to get out of playing? Then what?

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If you’re lucky enough to inherit something from someone you really love, that’s usually a good thing. But everyone once in a while, it’s not so simple.

What happens when you inherit something that was loved by the person who gave it – but maybe you don’t feel quite the same way about it?

That’s the puzzle we try to solve as we consider the fate of two violins I inherited a few years ago from my father. One of them came with a heartfelt note he wrote, asking for it to be played daily and kept in the family forever.

That’s a tall order. Especially for me, considering that I studied the violin for 10 years as a child to please my father. And secretly committed acts of violence to try to get out of it.

To determine what to do with my father’s violins, I needed expert help. So I consult Diane Mellon, the manager of David Segal Violins, a wondrous stringed instrument purveyor in New York City. Not only has that shop serviced several genuine Stradivarius violins, but they also have provided violin consulting for top performers like Midori, Joshua Bell and Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg.

To get a different perspective, Sally and I also consult Rachel Kuklinski, a cousin of mine who, like me, was persuaded to play the violin as a child. But she rebelled much more openly than I did.

Why is music so important to some families? And why the violin? Can anyone learn to make beautiful music? And what should I do with my father’s violins – along with stacks of sheet music and other mementos of musical events?

If you played an instrument as a child, the conclusions we reach just might be helpful to you too. Listen and find out.
Watch a video of 96-year-old David Small playing his violin and see photos of treasures mentioned in this episode on the website for I Couldn't Throw It Out.

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I Couldn’t Throw It Out - Kooky reunion: 67-year-olds perform their 5th grade play

Transcript

I Couldn't Throw It Out, Season 2, Episode 27
Kooky reunion: 67-year-olds perform their 5th grade play
Michael Small:
On this episode of I Couldn't Throw It Out, we want to start with a few questions, like, do you remember anything you wrote in elementary school? And by any chance, did you save it? And last of all, what would happen if you gathered your fifth grade friends to read it now? Because that's exactly what Sally and I did, and we have proof that this type of