Kindergarten Memories

High school graduation is drawing rapidly closer. My days left at TCS are numbered. 18 school days until the senior trip, to be precise. I have mixed emotions about leaving (which I plan to write about at some time) but I also have lots of fond memories. I want to write some of them down before I forget them in my old age!

I remember more about kindergarten at West Orange's Washington Elementary School than I do at TCS. Perhaps because I spent more months at Washington or, more likely, because it was more traumatic! Now I can see how the bad experience of kindergarten at Washington worked out for good by bring me to Trinity. I can't imagine anything better.

I remember being so excited to start school on the first day. I couldn't comprehend my classmates who were crying because they didn't want to leave their mothers. I have a vague recollection of asking my mother why they were crying, or perhaps telling her about it incredulously. I was always ready for school long before I had to leave. That is no longer true.

I lived just a few blocks from school so after the first few weeks my mother made me walk home on my own. I can't remember if I walked there myself too. I remember being worried that I would get lost or would forget how to get there. It seems so ridiculous now. The first day I was supposed to walk home alone there was some confusion. My mother thought I was going to walk and I thought she was going to come get me. All the other little children's parents came and left and then it was just me and Mrs. Vion waiting by the steps in front of the school until my mother got worried and came for me. That was very upsetting, but from then on I walked home alone just fine. All my classmates got picked up by a parent. I wasn't sure if it was against the rules to leave by myself so I used to wait until my teacher turned her back and then I would run around the corner and join a group to cross the street. She never noticed or she didn't care.

I don't remember when I started to dislike kindergarten, though I do remember some of the things I hated. Mrs. Vion never talked. She always yelled. She had long fingernails and they used to click when she played "God Bless America" on the tinny upright piano every morning. Once she kept me and another boy in from recess because I forgot to put my jar with my gluestick and pencils back in the container. I'm not sure if I ever told my parents about that. She let us leave half way through recess. I was embarrassed so I hid behind a tree and one of my classmates accused me of sneaking outside. I was rather fond of that particular tree; we spent some recesses together. The girls didn't want to play with me or I didn't want to play with them, and they boys played too rough. They would push me up against the fence. Perhaps they were playing dodgeball or bombardment or something reasonable, but I didn't like it. This is sounding very tragical.

One recess was particularly memorable. I bent down to tie my shoe and didn't know that my classmate, Obediah, was trying to jump over me. (He didn't warn me.) I stood up as he was in the air over me and was knocked down. My glasses broke and I was crying and there was blood dripping down my face but no one noticed for a long time. And when some fifth grade girls brought it to my teacher's attention she scolded me for crouching down to tie my shoe in the middle of the parking lot when recess was ending. I should have known I would be in the way, I guess. Obediah apologized. He and Paul were one of the nicer ones to me.

I also remember being disappointed that I wasn't learning very much. I missed more than a week of school with the chicken pox and made up all my classwork in under an hour or so.

I remember doing some sort of art project during one of my last weeks at Washington. It was with clay and paint or something. I never got it back even though I kept asking Mrs. Vion for it. Now I comfort myself by imagining my artwork is the one she holds up as an example for all her students years later.

I came to TCS in March, I think. I was way behind everyone else, in the slowest reading group. One of my classmates said I made it to the advanced reading group by the end of the year, but I'm not sure that's true. I couldn't believe they had learned so much going to school only three days a week when I had gone for the full week.

I wish I could say some wonderful things about kindergarten at TCS but I really don't remember much else. So thus ends my "very tragical mirth".