I don’t know how things are now, when my nieces were starting school in the early 00’s they had homework from day one, including kindergarten.  When I was in kindergarten, you had to be a good napper, good at using the potty without help, good at eating snacks and being quiet at story time. I’d like to tell you I totally aced it, but, sadly, I almost didn’t. First, I have a tendency to make up my own words, some recent examples would be: smallering, attackatory, choddler, they’re all pretty self-explanatory. Such nonsense is not acceptable to a teacher trying to decide if you are really ready for the complicated subjects of first grade like “word learning” and “paste eating.” 

During Kin finals I was asked to name each baby animal in the pictures, my answers were; horse puppy, dog puppy, cat puppy, cow puppy, and furthersuch puppy, because that is what my dad always called them, it made it all so easy! When, at age 5, would you need a word other than “horse” to describe the perissodactyl in the photo? I really wish I’d known the words colt, filly, foal and yearling back then, wouldn’t that have blown her mind! Just the word “horse” has dozens of synonyms, being able to identify that it was a baby horse really should have been good enough, a B- at least!

I should probably be embarrassed; I must have been at the time because it has stuck with me for decades. The teacher had pictures of shapes and you had to tell her how many sides each shape had. For example; the correct answer for triangle is “3.” (I got that one right) But she held up a picture of a solid red circle.  I stared at it, it had no corners, no beginning, no end.  I thought about this really hard and decided, if I was going to give someone a ball as a gift, I would put it in a box to wrap it and a square has 4 sides! But we already used “4” with the blue square, is this a trick question? There was also a green rectangle, so it must be ok to use “4” multiple times. My final answer was 4. I should’ve used a life line, I can still see her face, eyes wide with disbelief, lips still in a pucker while the “ooo” of “no” hung in the air. I think she knew my mom had been trying really hard to make me learn and be normal so she let me slide. Back then, they were more worried about your feelings than your future anyway.

Kindergarten was rough, there were never enough tricycles and you always had to close the door when you used the bathroom. That was the year Kenny bamboozled me into kissing him, too!  There was this huge metal horse on our playground, it was ours, exclusively, we had a fence encasing the kindergarten yard so none of the fifth graders could sneak in to steal our red balls to use in their violent games of dodgeball. One day at recess no other kids were on the horse, I think they were having tricycle races or something, I was scared of heights and I didn’t want the other kids to push me and make me fall, so up ‘til today I had just stayed off the horse. This was going to be my day, I was going to conquer my fears and I was going to climb that equine shaped jungle gym, to the top!

I decided to use one of the front legs as my route, I figured I could always use the bars that made up his neck to steady myself if I felt wobbly at the higher altitude. If you used one of the back legs, there was nothing higher than his butt, which meant you had to rely more on your skill and balance, which I had none of. One rung at a time, I very slowly climbed my way up, I had one hand on his ear, I was about to step on to the bar that made the shoulder when Kenny popped up on the other side.  He was going to ruin everything and I told him to go away! He refused! I insisted that it wasn’t fair, I was here first! Seizing his opportunity, he told me that if I kissed him, he’d jump down and let me have the horse to myself. Without much consideration, I said OK – who knew when I’d ever get the chance again to attempt this death-defying feat! No sooner had I suffered his putrid pucker and the teacher was in the doorway swinging her bell to signify the end of recess.  I felt tricked, he must’ve known recess was almost over!  On the way home from school I told my mom how I’d been swindled on the playground but she didn’t say anything. She was probably trying not to laugh at me, but she should have been telling me to never kiss boys!