Kindergarten

“Get your head out of bed and your feet on the floor,” my mom whispered. After receiving no reaction she followed with a more abrupt approach, “Get out of bed now!” My eyes struggled to open as if weights had been glued to my eyelids. After all, it wasn’t everyday I woke up at seven in the morning, but I was ready. After removing the weights from my eyelids I situated myself in the blue jeans and flannel shirt my mom had laid out the night before. As it was only a half-day, there was no need to take a lunch to school. Before I knew it, I was in the car, heart beating and mind racing, on the way to my first day of kindergarten otherwise known as a fiasco.

Upon arrival, after releasing my mom’s hand of course, I feasted my eyes on the maze that was the legs and feet of the parents. Winding through the maze like a snake through grass, I found the chair that had my name on it, “NICKY.” In front of it was a #2 pencil and a blue folder stuffed with miscellaneous paper. I began to take a seat to investigate the contents of my blue folder. However, before I had fully situated myself in the chair, I was pelted with a barrage of questions. From whom you may ask? You tell me. I later discovered the wiry red-haired senior that had provided the ammo for the barrage was my teacher, Mrs. Mendola. Some saw her as a mess, her hair was always elegantly disheveled, her clothes hardly formfitting, but I saw her as brilliant. She had an uncanny ability to connect with her students.

Although I did not know how a kindergarten day typically went, the four remaining hours went somewhat uneventfully. We covered “the keep your hands and feet to yourself rule.” Discussed introductions to organization (basically where the art supplies were located), followed by snack time and concluded with a sound from what, in later years, would become a familiar friend, the bell. The peal of the bell took to life at precisely 12:00 just as Mrs. Mendola had promised. With McDonalds on my mind I threw my 8 pack of Crayolas in the plastic backpack labeled NICKY and rushed out of the kindergarten exit (we were too small to go out of the same door as the older kids).

Looking for my mom I marched two rows over and looked four spots down to the parking spot where she told me she would be. It was empty; I was curious but by no means too worried to pass up the dodge-ball game that was forming. One by one the kids were pulled away from the riveting game. Eventually, there were so few players the ball seemed to find a hole in the ring we had formed almost every other time. Before I knew it all of my fellow players had vanished and it was just I in an empty parking lot. Having watched too many Barney episodes in my days as a preschooler and developed a confidence that the world was full of friendly purple dinosaurs to point me in the right direction, I then set out to find the yellow house I called home.

It began as a relaxed stroll out of the parking lot towards a street swarming with lunchtime traffic. Although I did not know where I was going, I remembered a sign that read “St. Ann School,” and headed for that. After reaching the sign it was a toss-up, left or right. I chose right, which led me past two retirement homes and a Starbucks. Completely lost and still in search of a pleasant dinosaur to lead me home I continued down the road for what seemed to be a marathon length. Trying to block out the nagging noise that was a car horn behind me, I sat down to strategize my next right or left. I rose to my feet and continued to the intersection and veered right. My ears again recognized the high-pitched horn; before I could turn to locate the source of the noise a black Toyota Camry (resembling my mom’s) whipped in front of me. Too my surprise the car that resembled my mom’s car was in fact her car. It turns out my mom was on her way to pick me up from a 2:00 dismissal when she saw the giant letters reading NICKY on my backpack.

So she took me home, the car ride was enjoyable excluding an extensive spiel about how the world had no friendly dinosaurs and was not a safe place for me to be running around. It was not until well after the lecture that the absence of McDonalds set in as a disappointment. Upon the conclusion of the following day I had learned that a typical kindergarten day did not entail an excursion throughout Prairie Village, but I did find the remaining months to be quite fascinating.