MORGANTOWN — And just like that, it was summer.
Sort of.
“Oh, yeah, they get out here pretty quick,” Isaiah Harvey said, with a sage nod. “The parents are always here early.”
They were especially punctual on this day. Those Bluebird school buses were in takeoff position, too.
Isaiah was a sixth-grader at Mountaineer Middle School.
Notice the past tense, as the keen observer of dismissal-bell traffic patterns at his school is now a rising seventh-grader at Mountaineer Middle School.
That’s because Wednesday June 6 was the last day of school in Monongalia County.
As Isaiah noted, it didn’t take long, once Principal Crystal Nantz went over the PA to wish everyone a happy summer.
Weather-wise, it didn’t seem like the start of the season — as related to the school calendar, at least.
The day was on the cool side, with clouds.
No matter. The heat was generated by the machinery that makes Mountaineer Middle go: Some 620 students, in grades 6-8, all whooping, cheering and otherwise seizing the day.
They whirled in groups and snapped selfies in the front of the school sign.
All except for Isaiah’s sixth-grade classmate Lillian Bolyard.
Lillian lurched along with a cardboard box, brimming with the archeology of the school year.
What could be packed up and brought home was.
“I had a couple of things I had to clean out,” she said, an understatement.
Meanwhile, Wesley Davis and Shelby Davis mirrored one another on the way out of the building. The brother and sister couldn’t help it. They’re twins.
The siblings from seventh grade are packing in some family road trips this summer, to see relatives in Georgia and Indiana.
“That makes a nice break,” Shelby said.
“The year was interesting,” said Wesley, who was already looking back.
Give Wesley’s observation an A, his principal said.
The year was interesting, Nantz said, with snow days and a statewide work stoppage last winter.
Her school got its mojo back in a minute, she said.
“Schools have their own rhythm,” the principal said. “It didn’t take long once we got back in the classrooms.”
Wednesday June 6, though, was about getting out of the classrooms.
And Lillian wasn’t loping the same as the others.
She sidestepped a sidewalk panel wishing a “Happy Summer,” written in chalk on one of the concrete squares.
Then, the newly minted seventh-grader deposited the aforementioned brimming box by the curb and plopped down, too, as she waited for her ride.
She couldn’t wait for the sun to roll back around, also.
It’s not going to be last-day-of-school cold and cloudy forever, she said.
Look for Lillian to eventually engage in the most summery of summertime activity.
“The pool,” she said. “I’m going to the pool.”
