The girls all played piano, learned the mysterious chords and the sustain pedal
The boys with sticks and leaves skated on the frozen pond

Now the division was a sharp as the teacher’s chalk line
Girls over here, boys over there, we do not talk to each other
Sometimes the parents sent the girls to a parochial school
It’s funny how teaching and learning seldom line up

The girls complained about piano lessons
The boys about baseball and their place in the lineup

I don’t remember how old we were, it wasn’t important then
What was important was not breaking your arm or getting poison ivy
The dirt road was a short cut to school, through an acre of Goldenrod
The Safety Patrol yelled at each other to come on.
“Come on!” they yelled, cupping their hands to their mouths
Remember when people did that?

A girl and a boy were friends and played with each other
They walked home from school together, they talked of rockets
Rockets made by children from flattened tin cans
Fuel was made from mushrooms and glowed just a little green
The boy and girl planned to make a lot of hard-boiled eggs
Get in their spaceship and escape

The boys teased him and made fun of his friend
The girls turned up their noses at the girl who wore dungarees.

But in sixth grade the girls changed.  Not the boys.
The girls wanted to know if they made out.  Made out.
We had no idea what that meant.