Sidaway Elementary, May 6, 2003

The Story

After taking a few swings at the driving range today I headed towards Central Richmond to stop by the mall. On the way was my old elementary school, Sidaway. I went to Sidaway from Kindergarten till Grade 7 at which point I proceeded to high school (Palmer and McNair). I had my camera on me and decided to stop by to see what had changed in the 14 years since I left there.

Surprisingly not much had changed. There was a new paint job (pale blue) but otherwise things were pretty much as they were when I attended. There were about 100 students now which is a few more than during my days and the school photo is now a big print rather than the 11x14 print we used to display.

What was surprising but shouldn't have been was how small everything seemed. The doorways which once seemed large to me was absolutely tiny. The field where I played soccer wasn't even as wide as the lot my house currently sits on (33 feet) yet it was plenty big to accomodate 20 or so kids during lunch hour.

After I was done there I went by the house where I was raised, the driveway which once seemed long was barely big enough for two cars end to end. The ditch that used to line our yard was now gone and the house was in significantly worse shape than it was when we moved out during the summer of grade 7. All in all it was nice to look back into the past.