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Reporter's Notebook-- A Need For Maps

BY JEFF WHITE

I'm not sure if the parents of third-grader Ashley Soucar know it, but their

daughter is quite a cartographer.

For that matter, so are Greg Parone, Matt Murry, Erica Raymond, Molly

Nostrand, Chris Nossal, Jamie Chard and Jared Miller.

At no other time do all the great young map makers of Newtown attack their

drawing boards with such voracity as on the first day of school, when the

hints of homework and tests that have been lapping delicately on the shores of

summer form a wave of reality.

Adjustments need to be made. Kids need to redefine their place in a larger

whole.

For some, such adjustments are made only to take into account different

classrooms, new teachers or a different group of friends present during lunch

period or recess.

Others have to familiarize themselves with entirely new places and

experiences.

The large expanses and long hallways of the middle and high schools must seem

daunting to sixth- and ninth-graders. Those big yellow boxes that bounce

around bends toward Head O' Meadow or Middle Gate must be awfully frightening

to new kindergarteners.

I can't remember. It's been 18 years since I was in kindergarten. But as I

inched into the maelstrom of high school rush hour Monday morning, I did have

pause to remember my first days at college, four years ago.

Cleveland Circle was a bustling intersection that had everything a Boston

College freshman could want: restaurants, movie theaters, ice cream, and movie

rental shops. But it just took too long to get there from my dorm.

In my few forays to The Circle, as it was called, not knowing any better I

took the rickety B Line branch of Boston's subway into downtown, changed at a

hub, and headed out to the end of the Cleveland Circle branch.

Then one day I happened to be on a Boston College bus, heading somewhere I

can't recall at this moment, when five minutes past BC's main gate the bus

motored through The Circle. The driver had just taken a side street. A trip

that had been taking me well over an hour to make was a destination little

more than a half mile away.

It's easy for me to laugh now, four years later, sitting at this desk speckled

with sun spots. But at the time, suffering the well-deserved jeers from my

friends, I started to draw a new map; not one based so much on geography as on

experience.

I know of two freshman high school girls that could have related to this story

on Monday. Amid the confusion in the halls, they consulted a white piece of

paper to ascertain where room A1-14 was. I didn't ask their names, but one

looked like an Amy and the other like a Rebecca. A teacher informed Amy and

Rebecca finally that room A1-14 was right behind them. Map entry number one.

I think maps are ultimately products of experience. It's easy to forget this.

The flimsy pieces of paper with which we trace our travels usually seem to be

no more than meandering lines from one point to another. But someone

researched the route and surveyed the land. Someone forged through

uncertainty, experienced it and drew it up as he or she went along.

In much the same way, so have all of us. As months turn into marking periods

and marking periods into years, we have redrawn and redefined our maps. These

are personal, unique, internal maps. But they are still the products of us

finding our way through the knee-wobbling effects of new places and

experiences.

No doubt sixth grader Steve Vichiola knew the best spots on the playground of

Middle Gate Elementary, but now he's at the middle school, with some new

additions to be made to his map. Andrew Sirois, who after four years at the

high school came to know the best teachers to take for certain classes, now

faces a spectrum of new teachers at his university.

A walk through Newtown schools on a first day is to hear Joanie Mitchell's

great representation of the evolution of time: "Cartwheels turn to car wheels

through the town." Though football will no doubt replace dodgeball at some

point, a cartographer's work knows no surcease. There are always new maps to

draw.

The new experiences of this week will help pave over future potholes. And just

as a driver familiar with a road tucks the map safely into the glove box, we

all put ours away when familiarity sets in. But they are still close at hand,

ready to be mended and updated when situations dictate.

Just ask high school freshman Jessica Horvath.

And for those Newtowners who have headed off to college, who knows? In four

years your maps might lead you to a car queue on Mile Hill Road while you

revisit the high school on a first day. Mine did.

We never throw our maps out; we just add new lines and street names, and watch

with amazement how they all blend into a great human tapestry. How these maps

will affect the globe is the challenge in front of Katie DeWeese, Kevin

Rovelli, Nicole Krauss, Genevieve Bleidner, Rebecca Clarke, Haakon Sorenson

and Pat Binio.

To all the Amys and Rebeccas out there: don't despair! Room A1-14 is right

behind you. Cleveland Circle is just around the bend. After all, it is in the

nature of maps to help us get to where we need to go.

Most likely many of us will find that the places which seem so far away are

really closer than we realize.