February 25th, 2009
Oh! I know I already posted tonight but I just had to tell you this story about my first day of kindergarten. It was strangely prophetic (I was destined to always hate school) and also tangentially related to tonight’s other post (it involves crying). Here is what happened:
The first thing I did in kindergarten was make a green construction paper frog with springy, folded paper legs. I distinctly recall enjoying this part of the school experience and to this day enjoy art projects, but alas, the good feeling was not to last. Our teacher instructed us to place our frog in one of the cubbies that were located behind a small wall in our classroom; each child was to have a single cubby for the entire year, a repository for handouts, art projects, lunches, and whathaveyous.
I was four when I started kindergarten so it really can’t be held against me that I thought this sounded like a wonderful idea, but my teacher should have known better. Twenty-five four and five year olds made identical art projects and, since none of us could read, they weren’t labeled. Yet somehow they were meant to act as individual placeholders for our cubbies – I now speculate with malice on my teacher’s qualifications.
At some later point we were going to play with a parachute so we had to take our shoes off, and the teacher instructed us to place our shoes in our cubbies. A melee ensued – children are many things but they are not orderly on their first day of school. At least not when they are under the control of a woman who thinks unlabelled frogs make good cubby tags.
At this point it is probably useful to tell you about a special talent I possess: I have an excellent visual-spatial memory, and I always have. I lose something about once every other year. I can put my hand into a messy drawer with my eyes closed and pull out the exact thing I wanted without fumbling. When Husband asks, “Where is my comfortable pen?” I can say “It’s on the left rear corner of the breakfast bar next to the multivitamins and under the fajita package” from another room without a moment’s thought. And when I was in kindergarten, I knew where my frog was.
But someone else’s shoes were on it. Imagine the injustice of having someone else’s shoes on your frog when you can’t prove that the frog is yours! If only I had been one of those smart toddlers who learned to read early instead of being the greedy toddler who smuggled olives out of the fridge when no one was looking.
Another thing about me: I like to follow the rules and am generally quite obedient so when it became apparent that I couldn’t follow the instructions (because someone else’s shoes were on my frog), I just fell apart. I stood behind the cubby wall and cried for what felt like a really long time. To this day my clearest memory of my early school years is of standing in a white and yellow dress, holding my for-school shoes in my hands, and sobbing with anxiety and frustration while staring at a pair of gleaming black shoes resting on my frog.
Finally, the teacher discovered what I was up to, and a rather predictable conversation ensued in which the teacher questioned my ability to know my own frog (I didn’t, but I knew where I’d placed it – and while we’re at it, doesn’t this prove my point about the stupidity of her plan?) and I became increasingly distressed, until she took another tack and in short order was able to identify whose shoes were on my frog. They belonged to a little girl whom I can’t recall at all other than that she owned those black, shiny shoes. The teacher got that little bitch to move them to her own fucking frog and, at last, I was able to place my shoes where they belonged.
And thus a career at school was born.