The Longest Day : In Rush to Flee Classroom for Summer, the Hours Crawl--and Childhood Flies

RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA — Miss Gizzi gets that look on her face and says be quiet, everyone please be quiet, but how can you be quiet when there’s just one day left, one tiny day, a few fidgety hours before the magic and freedom and endless twirling days of summer?

Summer. The word is like the sweetest candy in your mouth. It makes you squirm and giggle--you clap a hand over your mouth, but too late, the giggle already slipped out--and you’d better be careful, because Miss Gizzi might give you a pink card, which means you’re bad, or a blue card, which means you’re really bad, and if you’re bad enough she might not even send you on to third grade, who knows.

You’re one of thousands of public school students who have spent the last week gazing out the window, watching the clock, studying the calendar. Finally, in Miss Gizzi’s second-grade class at Arroyo Vista Elementary School, this was the day to end all days.

Tuesday! The morning starts, and you know that when the big hand hits the twelve and the little hand touches the two, those massive doors will fly open at last, letting you and all your friends run for daylight like a jailbreak of 4-foot-tall prisoners, and this room where you’ve spent one-seventh of your life will vanish completely from your thoughts, like the front tooth you lost last week.

Just hours to go.

“Miss Gizzi,” says a plaintive voice from behind a raised hand. “Can we count down the last 10 seconds and then shout: THIRD GRADE!”

We’ll see, she says, getting that look, asking everyone again to please be quiet please.

“You’re not showing good self-control right now,” she says, “and I can’t send you to third grade until you show good self-control.”

For a second, maybe two, there is total silence. Then, a giggle, followed by a murmur and an urgent whisper. Something that needed to be said right now, something that couldn’t wait until recess.

Maybe you could concentrate on schoolwork if there weren’t so many things to watch and smell and think about this week, like the commencement music from the sixth-grade graduation down the hall, music that sounds brassy and important, like the Future. Even more distracting is the boy in the back of the class who’s picking his nose. Then there’s Matt, who’s suddenly discovered a talent for reading upside down, which cracks up Cameron, who turns his book upside down, too, and before you know it half the class is reading upside down and laughing, some of them throwing their heads back and cackling like Snoopy.

“Everybody’s doing cartwheels,” says an exasperated Brianna, watching the mounting mutiny among her peers. “Everyone’s all wild. You can’t concentrate on what you’re working on, and Miss Gizzi gets all grumpy.”

Does she ever. When Miss Gizzi smiles at you it feels like your heart might explode, but when she frowns at you it’s like the room temperature just dropped a few degrees Fahrenheit, or Celsius, both of which you learned about this year, along with other cool stuff, like the world’s longest river, the four forms of energy (five if you count second-graders) and the incredible beauty of the English sentence.

Sometimes, you feel like even if you live to be 120, which you probably will, you’ll never forget Miss Gizzi, whose first name is Tracy, and who shares this classroom with her former sorority sister from San Diego State University, Miss Hoffman, along with Miss Hoffman’s 20 students, making it 42 people crammed into one room. On days like this, all that human energy threatens to melt the murals right off the walls.

Miss Hoffman’s first name is Amy, and she’s kind of like Miss Gizzi, but kind of different, the way Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” is like Belle from “Beauty and the Beast,” but also different. Miss Hoffman loves Starbucks coffee and pretty shoes and lame jokes, and sometimes she starts singing into a bullhorn, loud songs like, “Don’t cry for me, Argentina!” When she’s really happy she hops up on the desks and dances, which makes you laugh so hard you think you might pass out.

“Our last day with the craziest teacher on earth,” says Kristy, who is 7 going on 17 and wears different color nail polish on each nail and walks up and down the playground at recess, telling everyone and no one, “I’m a model.”

Watching her, the boys don’t blink, which impresses Kristy’s friend Kasidy, who throws her hands above her head and declares herself the most “dramatic” person in school, then brags about having no bedtime, and a boyfriend, and anything else to get the attention off Kristy and back where it belongs, on herself.

Kristy and Kasidy think they might be the most personable students in the class, but they have lots of competition, like Roxanne, who wishes the year would end so she could get on with her life plans, which include becoming a flutist, tennis player, artist, singer and dancer.

Or there’s Alex, who smiles with all of his might, who will talk to anyone or anything, including the book he’s reading, telling the book as he turns the page, “I knew that already.” When Alex’s parents put him to bed at night, he lies there in the dark, talking to himself, trying to get all the words out of his head so he can fall asleep.

“Miss Gizzi,” someone asks, like a thirsty person begging for water, “how many more hours?”

It’s so unfair, the way time slows down when you get close to Christmas or birthdays or camping trips, something Matt has spent a lot of time thinking about.

“When you’re excited about something,” he explains, “it always goes fast. But when you’re bored with something, it goes slow.”

His friend Lara nods, as though Matt is the smartest person in the universe. When he asks her if she understands something, she’s afraid to say no, so she says things like, “No, sort of, mostly.”

Goodbye forever means nothing when you’re 7 or 8. The awesome truth that this moment will never come back, that the last day of second grade will never happen again, means nothing to you now, because there are pools to be swum and video games to be conquered.

On the other hand, with only a few minutes left, a change comes over everyone in the room. Leaving Miss Gizzi and Miss Hoffman doesn’t seem like such a great idea all of a sudden. How can you leave these two women who smile all the time, who teach you things and make themselves such a part of your life that once in a while you slip and call one of them “Mom?”

“She needs to hold all of us before we go,” says Kristy, hugging Miss Hoffman tight.

That’s all Miss Hoffman needs, a desperate grip like that around her waist, before the tears fill her eyes, and when the children see her crying they swarm and throw themselves upon her.

Now, someone looks up and sees that there’s 10 seconds left, and the countdown begins: “Three, two one . . . THIRD GRADE!!”

Out the door they go, holding hands with their parents and toting their overstuffed backpacks, and as the door slams shut behind the last one, Miss Hoffman and Miss Gizzi exchange a look, and the tiny classroom they’ve shared since September suddenly feels like the largest, loneliest, quietest place in the whole wide world.