I have had a couple of first days of school that I can remember. Seeing as how my last day of school is fast approaching, I thought I’d reminisce.
Before I started Kindergarten (I love that word), I went to preschool. There was a giant fig tree in front of a building with a playground on the north side and the whole place was located in a cove nestled in some hills a couple cities from where my family lived. Although I can’t honestly say I remember the first day in vivid detail, I have an impression of being shy and clinging to one of my parents’ legs. I must have been about four years old in 1984 and I still was quite attached to either a bottle or a pacifier - not sure which, though I remember it was a mild cause for concern.
Since I can’t remember the first day, I’ll parlay six things that I remember in particular about preschool, in descending order of importance:
1. The fig tree. My lifelong philosophical struggle with religion and existence must have originated with this amazing, sprawling tree that just begged to be climbed on, swung on, or used as a vehicle for tag or as a fort. It also provided ammunition in the form of unripe, green pieces of fruit. I imagine to discourage either throwing or eating the figs, I was offered fig newtons for snack. That tree was preschool for me, and I think the school shirt even had the tree of “knowledge” as a predominant fixture on the front. Who knew the symbolism of that tree would continue to follow me through my school career.
2. Frida the chicken. Our preschool was very hands on and I remember many activities where interaction with sand or play dough was a big deal. Part of the curriculum also dictated that exposure to animals was a big deal and so one day a chicken named Frida was brought to class and placed in the middle of the circle all the students formed in the middle of the classroom. I have never been what you would call an animal lover, my instinct to avoid unpredictable, less than sentient creatures is strong and I was not a happy camper when Frida the chicken went straight for me as soon as she was let loose. I’m pretty sure I cried. This trauma would later be amplified when not one, but two family dogs would run into me blindside within the next couple of years.
3. Oscar the Grouch cupcakes. For my birthday that year, the first one where I would be in a class setting where parents might bring in goodies to enhance my popularity in the school yard, I asked for a personification in frosting, of what I thought was the coolest character on Sesame Street: Oscar the Grouch (I wonder if this is where my fear of being homeless came from since he did live in a trash can and I was introduced to him at a young age). My mom did an amazing job of recreating a couple dozen green Oscars complete with trash can lids in the form of vanilla wafer cookies. This would be the beginning of my mom’s incredible creativity in designing custom cupcakes, birthday cakes, halloween costumes, and science fair boards over at least the next six years for me - to be repeated for each of the five siblings that followed.
4. My dad’s participation. From the time I was born till about the age of five or six, if I remember right, my dad was often free during the day. When my parents first married and began having children, my dad was a community college plant science professor who ran the farmer’s market, drove tractors, got to carry around a cool little switch-blade type knife for use in farming, and waited tables at night - and he was usually off during the day and could come to most big events at our preschool. Immediately prior to my tenure un preschool, and maybe during it as well, I coul also be picked up by dad with my younger sister in tow to go eat salami and cheese bohemian style on the lawn in front of the nursing building at the community college where my grandmother worked. Even once he got a daytime job, my dad still maintained an amazing amount of flexibility to be involved in our lives almost any time there was a major school event or fieldtrip.
4. Half-days. Just like kindergarten, college, and law school, preschool featured only having to go to school for part of the day. Even then, I think I realized the value of putting some work in and then enjoying the playground, sandbox, boob-tube, GI Joes, or Legos for the rest of the day. I will miss this flexibility immensly once I have to get a job in the real world - again.
5. The magic circle. That same circle I mentioned above that we all sat in Native-American style (yes, back then we called it Indian style) to host Frida the chicken, is also ingrained into my mind. The teachers did a good job of using the symbolism of that circle to their advantage by associating it with fun activities like story time and games like duck-duck-goose so that they could also use it to discipline us by associating its order with quiet. In the circle, we had to wait our turn to talk and we had to be respectful of others. So simple. So uniform. To a little kid, sitting in a circle could be magic.
6. I had a sixth one when I began writing, but maybe I incorporated it into one of the above. It might have been the shirt or the play dough or the pacifier or the sandbox or the driving probably the farthest I’ve ever had to go in my life each day just to go to school at what was a very parent-involved school that I’m sure my parents put a lot of effort into finding. It was a fun route into a city we didn’t usually go to that faded from urban into sort of deserted hilly area. The nursery school was sort of my Strawberry Fields Forever.
Anyway, that was a fun jog down the memory lane of how my nearly 22 year academic career got started. Time to get back to studying so that I can finish off the last conceivable leg of the journey off.
-jd
