Earliest Memories

I'm in the middle of a book right now that Barb's Mom kindly left with me. It's "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten," by Robert Fulghum.

The book has made me think back to my earliest memories.

I still do, amazingly enough, remember nap time in kindergarten. We would have milk and cookies, the teacher would read us a little story, and we'd all fall asleep for a little nap on nice blankets spread across the floor.

I'm not sure why that activity was stopped after kindergarten. Actually I think that it's a great thing, something that should be continued through adult life.

I mean can you imagine the New York Stock Exchange closing at noon for a little milk and cookies and a quick nap? I've seen those guys and gals hustling and bustling and screaming and pointing. I think they'd be much healthier and better off if they could take a little nap and stop to enjoy one of the simple pleasures in life - milk and cookies.

The memories I have of first grade are vaccinations. It seemed like every other day our class was marched to the nurses office to have another vaccination. We all dreaded that. I think we had around 72 vaccinations in all, or at least it seemed like that.

The memories I have of second grade are all about recess. Running through the grass and over the little hills playing tag, it was great. The boys would run wild. The girls would kind of hang out in a little group. There was no mixing between boys and girls. Girls did have cooties after all.

Every now and then the girls would make a group decision to try to chase the boys. They made group decisions, a challenge to the group, to see which girl could catch a boy and kiss him.

This was more of an annoyance to me than anything else. I was way faster than any of the girls and could easily out run them.

One day I was leaning up against the brick school wall just gazing out into the distance, probably thinking about all the vaccinations I had last year. I turned around and suddenly a girl gave me a quick kiss on the cheek.

"I got him! I got him! I kissed Jim Albert!" she yelled, sprinting back to the group of girls with tremendous pride in her accomplishment.

Aaaaarrrrrrrgggghhhhhhhh! COOTIES!

But that wasn't the worst thing. I was horrified. I was so humiliated. I let a girl sneak up on me and kiss me on the cheek. That memory would haunt me for years. For years I would never trust girls.

The first day of third grade was rough. We had a very tough teacher. The first day of class she showed us a movie which started with the "Star Spangled Banner." We all attentively watched and listened and when our national anthem was over she stopped the film.

She started screaming at us. None of us had gotten out of our seats and stood for our national anthem and she was REALLY upset about it. Boy did she lay into us.

She did become ill that year (possibly from screaming too much) and we had a substitute teacher for the rest of the year. I always remember that she allowed us to bring records into class and play them. I brought in the "Monster Mash" record. We all thought it was funny to play it at 75 rpm.

Third grade was also the year of the "fluteaphone," the little plastic recorder that introduced us all to music for the first time. We were terrible. Even at our young age we knew that. But we blew and blew, out of sync in huffs and puffs rather than steady breaths. God bless our parents. They all came out to our recital and smiled and glowed like it was the best music they had ever heard.