For someone so fixated on school that I never left, you’d think I would vividly remember my first day of school. But, I don’t. When I realized that recently, it was a weird sensation because I remember everything. Well, everything about sentimental stuff…like the first day of school. I remember very clearly what the kindergarten room looked like--with its big windows, kid-sized bathroom stalls, cubbies, and rows of desks--but I can’t conjure up the events of the big day when I finally got to go and do the one thing I had dreamed about all my life until then. Strange. I can recall all my babies’ academic debuts. Keilana in her ponytails and denim dress waiting by the little tree out front, impatient for the time to pass. Connor not realizing that school hours are not negotiable and walking home alone when he got bored. Addison waving us off with an impatient shooing motion so she could get back to rocking the spring-based race car in the play area to its extreme range of motion while the little boy riding shotgun clung on for his life. And soon, all too soon, it will be Scarlett’s turn. We play school now and she loads her “pack pack” with all the necessities of life-
-binkies, crackers, a disc from her Elmo computer, and some dried PlayDoh--but nothing quite matches up to the real thing. In Robert Kraus’ Spider’s First Day At School, a little arachnid learns the ropes…and the slide…and the swings…and the…http://www.amazon.com/Spiders-First-Day-at-School/dp/0590410911
Um, that was actually Addison who walked home from school when she got bored.
ReplyDeleteConnor was the one who didn't get a proper "first day of school" because of bed-wetting.
No, Addison stormed out of school on her first day after staging a coup attempt over the printing method being used but didn't make it very far, and Connor walked from Little Chico Creek across Forest Ave. because they were "just learning letters" and he already knew letters. One of our neighbors picked him and took him the rest of the way while someone from Chico Unified called me up to scream at me for them losing my kid.
ReplyDeleteAh yes. Sometimes I get storming and bored confused. Come to think of it, I can't even remember where Addison went to kindergarten. Or where we were living at the time. Or what Addison looks like.
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