Throwback Thursday

Sherman, set the WABAC machine to 1971. Here I am in the sixth grade class photo at P.S. 16 in Albany. I was sitting on the floor to the far left in the first row with four other boys. We were the short guys. Behind us, eight girls were seated. Standing (of course) behind the girls were two rows of the taller kids (three girls and thirteen boys).

A wry smile.

This is the year I started taking French in school. I was a year behind because I had just moved into the city school district in fifth grade, then placed into an "advanced" class for sixth grade. The "advanced" kids had started French the year before. I had some catching up to do and one of the kids was assigned to tutor me in French. We would meet on the school steps in the morning before class started and he'd run the alphabet and numbers with me.

The whole class. My French tutor is the kid in dark-rimmed glasses with the glasses case in his shirt pocket.

I'm impressed by how the photographer set this up more or less symmetrically. Boys and girls are grouped, not random, by height, and to the extent possible by hair color and style. For example, the two seated girls in the middle each have their long hair tied in tails. And the two long-haired girls behind them, on either side of a curly-haired girl, are each wearing a headband. I don't remember the photo session and I'm sure we weren't aware of what the photographer was doing.