Kindergarten: From The Trenches

As a little kid I was enthusiastic, creative, sensitive, and had a flare for the dramatic.  I loved to tell stories and put on one-girl shows for my family.  I cried and laughed easily.  I loved to play outside.  I loved animals.  I loved kids.  I loved adults.  I just plain loved.  When I entered kindergarten at the Catholic school up the street from my home it was with these beautiful qualities in tow.  I was ready to learn and play and make friends.  I was excited.  My excitement wasn't for a moment tempered by fear or worry or anything of the sort; it was complete and unadulterated.  But the messages I began to receive from my kindergarten teacher started to chip away at my joy and confidence.  My humor and playfulness were met with rueful glares.  My sensitivity was met with irritation or outright anger.  I began to downplay the vibrant parts of my personality; I began to second-guess my every kid-instinct toward happiness and fun.  I'd never before encountered an adult who found me so distasteful, so I went to work to remedy things.  I observed other children whom she was kinder toward--kids who were quieter and more serious.  I strove in earnest to emulate them.  It wasn't easy.  And I slipped up again and again, forever stunned by the teacher's vitriolic response to innocuous things.  During a sing-along one day, I decided to chime in with my opera-voice, a falsetto with a quavering vibrato that I'd been working on since hearing such a voice on the radio.  I expected to be praised for my extraordinary adult-like tone.  Instead she stopped playing the piano and lurched to face the kids seated behind her, shrilling, "Who is singing like that?!!"  The question was so livid and accusatory I didn't dare volunteer that I was the culprit.

Another time when the all girls were on a scheduled bathroom break, I found myself to be the first one done and decided to have a tiny bit of fun.  I turned off the light switch in the bathroom for about four seconds.  There were surprised gasps and a couple of "Heys!" before the I turned the light back on.  I went back to class wondering what my fellow classmates would say about the miniature ordeal.  It turned out that the event generated so much buzz that the teacher found out about it and refused to let any of the kids have their snacks until the perpetrator confessed.  I was shocked by this turn of events and promptly decided to take my prank to the grave.  After 10 minutes or so a short brunette girl raised her hand and confessed.  My jaw dropped.  She was yelled at and made to sit in the corner with no snack while the rest of us ate.  When the teacher wasn't looking I snuck over to her and asked her if she really did it.  She said, "No, I was just hungry and wanted it to be over we could eat our snacks."  I nodded seriously as I covertly slid half a pouch of fruit snacks into her hand.  And although I felt horrible that she took the rap for me, I wasn't about to confess and incur the wrath of teacher. 

The incident in kindergarten that wounded me most greatly came later.  I had been working my hardest to appease the teacher and get her to like me.  Once I sat silently through an entire mass without squirming or whispering, just hoping she'd notice.  It turned out that she did notice, and she rewarded me with a miniature Reese's peanut butter cup.  I popped it into my mouth with all the sacred reverence of a communion wafer, congratulating myself at having finally won her over.  So contrasted with this experience, the next day was doubly heart-breaking.  It was near Easter and my classmates and I were seated around the little art tables coloring pictures of bunnies.  I sat next to the girl in class who was most liked and praised by the teacher, hoping to observe and replicate her coloring technique so I could also be praised.  I noticed the girl used soft pressure with her crayon, and that she had chosen gray for the fur.  I followed suit.  She finished before I was done, so I rushed a bit so that I could get in line right behind her to have the teacher judge our work.  Even with rushing a bit at the end I thought my bunny looked really good.  I was proud of my work.  I stood behind the teacher's pet and listened as she heaped compliment upon compliment upon her.  I couldn't wait to hear the same words directed at me, at my work.  As I stepped up to her desk I saw her look at the picture carefully.  Then she said, "Which stamp do you think I'm going to give you?"  Sitting on the desk were the teachers two oft-used ink stamps--one was of a smiley face and the other was of a sad, crying face.  These stamps would only seem cruel and bizarre when I was older.  I shyly pointed to the happy face stamp.  She swiftly stamped the crying face upon my paper.  I stood there dazed and blinking until she told me to go sit down so the next kid in line could get his stamp.  Instead of sitting down I walked toward the coat room to try to get a handle on the grief that was about to overwhelm me.  I decided not to cry this time; I opted instead for anger as I crumpled my artwork into a ball and stuffed it into my backpack.  As I emerged from the coat room the teacher was right there asking where I'd put my picture.  "In my backpack," I said, trying to keep the tears at bay.  "Let me see it," she demanded, walking briskly into the coat room and waiting as I pulled out my crushed art.  She then proceeded to browbeat me for destroying my school work, the very work she had mercilessly deemed awful just a minute prior. 

I couldn't do anything right, it seemed.  I couldn't even quietly express my hurt at having tried my best and failed abysmally nonetheless.  There was quite literally nothing I could do that she didn't consider sloppy or annoying or bad or wrong in some way.  My existence was a catch-22.  Since no amount of good behavior or effort was ever going to endear me to this teacher in any lasting or meaningful way, and since I still had blinding hurt searing through my veins, I did the only thing that felt possible.  I fled.  I grabbed my backpack and shoved past the teacher, out the classroom door, down the staircase, and out into the bright and chill of early spring.  My feet pounded the pavement hard as I sprinted home, bursting in the door with sobs that ravaged my little five year old body.  I was met by a very surprised mom who held me and smoothed out my crumpled picture and told me that she thought it was excellent.  It garnered a place on the refrigerator and everything.

This was when I first learned that adults could be cruel.  But it would take a few more years before I began to understand that not every adult warrants respect, and that not everything every adult says about you is right or true.  It would take a great deal more time before I developed the audacity to challenge authority when I found it unjust.  For most of us it will take a lifetime to heal the early wounds that robbed us of our beautiful, big-hearted innocence.