First day of kindergarten.
I remember the smell of mold, chalk and paste. (Having multiple childhood allergies at this age, I probably remember these smells most since they probably caused me to feel ill.)
I remember the dimly lit hall scared me but other than that, it felt comfortable. I recall the happy sound of kids laughing and playing, the sound (and smells) of the steam radiators.
The small and squat Mansard-roofed brick building was set off from 2nd Avenue in a slight dip in elevation in the Fairmount section of Woonsocket. The classroom walls were covered in those ubiquitous paper cut outs depicting the symbols of the season…leaves, cornucopias, bunches of corn on the cob, a little red schoolhouse…you know the stereotypical autumn stuff.
I don’t remember my emotions regarding separation from my mom or my interactions with my new teacher and classmates. Not at “this” kindergarten.
Within a couple of months or so, I was repeating the whole “first day of school” experience at another school, this time Citizen’s Memorial near our new home in the Woonsocket Housing Authority managed Morin Heights Blvd. Yup, a socially stigmatized apartment community pejoratively nicknamed “The Projects”.
First day of kindergarten…again! This time: Not so pleasant.
This new school really bothered me right from the get go. It was new, for one thing, and designed in that minimalist 1960’s style, all brick and aluminum and green-tinted glass. The brick wasn’t the old-fashioned deep red brick with warn edges like 2nd Avenue School either; they were hard lined and orange. Inside, the floor was completely covered in highly-polished, green-flecked linoleum with a black vinyl baseboard. The walls in the halls were highly-glazed cinderblock. It was an atmosphere of cold and unforgiving austerity.
Unlike the first “first day”, this time I was admitted into the classroom in the middle of the day, after all the other kids had already gotten to their desks.
When I was brought in by someone from the front office, all the kids stared at me as if I was some kind of bug that had just slithered into their private sanctuary. Each desk had each pupils’ name taped to the front in cut-out construction paper…no doubt created by each kid months ago when they were getting used to one another; getting to know one another’s names; establishing friendships.
Now I was the only stranger.
It wasn’t only my new classmates that made me feel unwanted; the teacher too, seemed perturbed that she had to place a new student so late into the school year. Oh such a bother!
During playtime, it seemed no other kid wanted to be the first to approach me so I shied away and tentatively set out to explore the play area on my own. That’s when I made some “fatal” errors. I started playing with the dolls and the play kitchen toys.
I’m sure at this age, most of the kids could care less about adult proscribed gender-specific playthings, but some of the kids had the no-doubt parentally-infused sentience as to what toys were for girls and what ones were for boys.
Lo and behold though, I soon found out that this differentiation was heavily reinforced by none other than our teacher.
After a few of the boys giggled at me for my playtime choices, the teacher came to me and sternly told me that I was NOT to play with girls toys…I needed to play with the trucks or perhaps the cowboy hats and shiny silver-painted plastic guns.
“That’s what boys play with!”, she stated definitively as if it were one of the fucking Ten Commandments…Thou shalt not be a sissy!
Oh yes…play with guns! Even at the age of 5, I was aware of the horrors of the Nightly News. Every night, Walter Cronkite came on TV and gravely reported on the casualties mounting in this decidedly very unpopular war; far, far away.
No, I didn’t fully understand the concepts of war and Vietnam and all, but I knew what the names scrolling across the TV screen were. Dead people. And though even the concept of death was still beyond my full scope, I knew it was bad. I knew when someone died, you never saw them again. They went to “live with Jesus”. Like Pépère Chaussé and Grandpa Stempkowski. And people were sad. And they cried.
So don’t be a sissy…play with guns and pretend you are shooting “the bad guy”. ‘Cause we’re the good guys…right?
Right?
I remember the smell of mold, chalk and paste. (Having multiple childhood allergies at this age, I probably remember these smells most since they probably caused me to feel ill.)
I remember the dimly lit hall scared me but other than that, it felt comfortable. I recall the happy sound of kids laughing and playing, the sound (and smells) of the steam radiators.
The small and squat Mansard-roofed brick building was set off from 2nd Avenue in a slight dip in elevation in the Fairmount section of Woonsocket. The classroom walls were covered in those ubiquitous paper cut outs depicting the symbols of the season…leaves, cornucopias, bunches of corn on the cob, a little red schoolhouse…you know the stereotypical autumn stuff.
I don’t remember my emotions regarding separation from my mom or my interactions with my new teacher and classmates. Not at “this” kindergarten.
Within a couple of months or so, I was repeating the whole “first day of school” experience at another school, this time Citizen’s Memorial near our new home in the Woonsocket Housing Authority managed Morin Heights Blvd. Yup, a socially stigmatized apartment community pejoratively nicknamed “The Projects”.
First day of kindergarten…again! This time: Not so pleasant.
This new school really bothered me right from the get go. It was new, for one thing, and designed in that minimalist 1960’s style, all brick and aluminum and green-tinted glass. The brick wasn’t the old-fashioned deep red brick with warn edges like 2nd Avenue School either; they were hard lined and orange. Inside, the floor was completely covered in highly-polished, green-flecked linoleum with a black vinyl baseboard. The walls in the halls were highly-glazed cinderblock. It was an atmosphere of cold and unforgiving austerity.
Unlike the first “first day”, this time I was admitted into the classroom in the middle of the day, after all the other kids had already gotten to their desks.
When I was brought in by someone from the front office, all the kids stared at me as if I was some kind of bug that had just slithered into their private sanctuary. Each desk had each pupils’ name taped to the front in cut-out construction paper…no doubt created by each kid months ago when they were getting used to one another; getting to know one another’s names; establishing friendships.
Now I was the only stranger.
It wasn’t only my new classmates that made me feel unwanted; the teacher too, seemed perturbed that she had to place a new student so late into the school year. Oh such a bother!
During playtime, it seemed no other kid wanted to be the first to approach me so I shied away and tentatively set out to explore the play area on my own. That’s when I made some “fatal” errors. I started playing with the dolls and the play kitchen toys.
I’m sure at this age, most of the kids could care less about adult proscribed gender-specific playthings, but some of the kids had the no-doubt parentally-infused sentience as to what toys were for girls and what ones were for boys.
Lo and behold though, I soon found out that this differentiation was heavily reinforced by none other than our teacher.
After a few of the boys giggled at me for my playtime choices, the teacher came to me and sternly told me that I was NOT to play with girls toys…I needed to play with the trucks or perhaps the cowboy hats and shiny silver-painted plastic guns.
“That’s what boys play with!”, she stated definitively as if it were one of the fucking Ten Commandments…Thou shalt not be a sissy!
Oh yes…play with guns! Even at the age of 5, I was aware of the horrors of the Nightly News. Every night, Walter Cronkite came on TV and gravely reported on the casualties mounting in this decidedly very unpopular war; far, far away.
No, I didn’t fully understand the concepts of war and Vietnam and all, but I knew what the names scrolling across the TV screen were. Dead people. And though even the concept of death was still beyond my full scope, I knew it was bad. I knew when someone died, you never saw them again. They went to “live with Jesus”. Like Pépère Chaussé and Grandpa Stempkowski. And people were sad. And they cried.
So don’t be a sissy…play with guns and pretend you are shooting “the bad guy”. ‘Cause we’re the good guys…right?
Right?