Kindergarten

Someone once gave me a little book with a title something like, "Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten". It made me sad.

The content was funny, but it was difficult getting past the title. I had been so excited as a pre-schooler, so filled with anticipation about Kindergarten! But my first day in Kindergarten was one of the most disappointing days that ever was.

Both Brothers went to school. LittleBrother was younger than BigBrother, but older than I by fifteen months. BigBrother would have been in the second grade, as I figure it, when I went with Mama one day to BigBrother’s school. His principal had a complaint against BigBrother and I didn’t understand what the problem was, even though I heard everything Mama heard. BigBrother was suspended. This made me even more anxious to go to Kindergarten! I wanted to understand, I needed to know, why BigBrother was suspended and not the little girl.

I can’t imagine anyone not looking up, while waiting to climb the ladder up the sliding board. And, it was beyond my comprehension why BigBrother would even want to look up her dress, especially since she didn’t have panties on. BigBrother said the girl kept smiling down at him and he thought she would have hurt feelings if he ignored her. Anyway, the principal told Mama that BigBrother had followed the girl around the playground and around again, and watched her go up the ladder several times. I so badly wanted to go to Kindergarten so I could learn why looking was worse than not wearing panties. Isn’t it natural, after all, even courteous, to look when someone is showing something?

It was so sad when LittleBrother went to school. For me, I mean. I had to stay with Miss Ping because Mama worked, and I missed both Mama and LittleBrother. Miss Ping was nice, but I sorely missed LittleBrother. He was the one who showed me the world, and who told me everything about life. Yes, Mama and my father told me things, too, but LittleBrothers' tellings were titillating, if not fascinating. He was the one who explained about the rattlesnake, too.

We lived in military housing. Only our back yard was fenced, with chain link. I don't know why a fence was necessary. I mean, there was nothing I could see that needed to be kept out, and there surely wasn’t anywhere to wander off to. There was just a lot of pale, sandy dirt, a few scraggly plants, and hills in the distance, way, way beyond the fence.

One day there was a rattle snake, way over there, just inside our fence, but I wasn't allowed near it . They knew I would have investigated if I could! This snake had a rattle to its name, something enticing, I thought. Even from the distance, I could see it was smaller than the other snake, so I didn't know what the big deal could be. The other snake was one Mama let me handle one day when we stopped by an Indian shop. Snake and I posed for pictures. Brothers didn't want to be near the reptile so, with the thing as thick as my little neck draped around my shoulders, I did my best to elicit squeals from Brothers.

Fortunately, my father was home when the distraction slithered inside our fence, so he got the hatchet (maybe it was a machete or ax, I don’t know the difference) and chopped the snake’s head off. He draped the long, wriggly body over the fence, to be left overnight. My father said it was to dry the snake out, but it was LittleBrother who told me why my father did that. Simply explained: the snake is poisonous, so its body draped over the fence prevented the snake from slithering to rejoin its head. It was left overnight to allow the light of the morning sun to fry its essence.

LittleBrother learned lots of good stuff at Kindergarten. (Maybe it was an opportunity, too, for him to expand his audience.) But he was selective to whom he gave information. Each house on the army base we lived looked like all the others, and each street was indistinguishable for the next. The day LittleBrother and I were the last ones on the bus going home after vacation bible school was a day I really wished I was in Kindergarten!

Neither LittleBrother nor I could determine which house we lived in, nor the street the house was on. The bus driver was quite nice, as I recall. He wore a cap, which he removed to scratch his head from time to time, trying to find our house. Everything looked familiar, everything looked the same, but nothing was quite right! Square grey houses with lots of space between, a path to the front door from the sidewalk that ran the distance along the street, tufts of faded green grass scattered around, and lots of insipid, faded brown dirt, all facing paved, flat, accurately straight streets. After several false stops the bus driver finally took us to the Military Police station. LittleBrother sat on a chair. I sat on the desk of a big MP. Because LittleBrother was rather shy it was I who answered the MP’s questions, they trying to determine where we lived. I told them everything I knew. LittleBrother sat silent, too shy to speak. He had a Japanese chin.

It was when another MP walked in and looked at LittleBrother and me that the mystery of where we lived was solved. This MP recognized us. He had been one of the searchers called to find us when LittleBrother was showing me the Oil Well. That was when we first moved from Tokyo, when Mama left Brothers and me, the BabySister, in the car while she went into the commissary for a few things. (That truly was a different era!). BigBrother wasn’t interested in the Oil Well, he said it was just a water tower. It was hot, he was not interested, so he stayed in the car.

Well, the grass in the field was over both of our heads, and all we could see was the Oil Well towering in the distance. We could see mountains way, way over there, majestic, hazy purple peaks and mounds. But LittleBrother and I could only see each other, and that Oil Well, the grass breaking and bending as our little feet tromped through it. We didn’t know it at the time, but BigBrother had pointed our destination to the search team Mama had summoned to find her preschool babies. Mama said later that they had called and called, but we were too far to hear, and a dozen men spread out in the field of grass four feet high to look for us. Finally someone saw the grass wiggling over our heads, way over there, and our trek to the Oil Well was abruptly halted.

I remember LittleBrother telling them he was taking his sister to an Oil Well, and both of us being hefted atop huge, broad shoulders, and carried back to the car. It was dark by then. I was quite upset, as I had been no closer to an oil well than when we began our trek. That was another thing I was looking forward to learning in Kindergarten, what an oil well feels like.

Back to the MP station, when LittleBrother & I couldn't identify our home after vacation bible school. I'm sure the driver passed it, he drove up and down every street on the base! In that experience I realized yet another benefit of going to Kindergarten. I had described everything in our home I could think of, to help them find our house. I detailed the boxes of pretty dolls and cups and things Mama had bought in Japan, my pink ruffly pajamas, even my father’s pipes. As Mama would later relate, I had told the MPs everything that could be told about anything, but they couldn’t understand a word I babbled. LittleBrother sat, silent as a mute. I just knew that if I could hurry and go to Kindergarten, I’d learn to be able to describe in better detail to tell anyone, even adults, where we live!

Mama bought a big set of books, the Encyclopedia Britannica, when we moved from Tokyo to the Army base at Fort Hauchuca in Arizona. The dusty, barren yard that backed our house was nicely spacious for exploring the nooks and crannies with assorted little critters tucked inside and out. And LittleBrother and I peeked and poked in each cranny we could find, peering under rocks and dried things, looking for little beings. That was the only time we ever had a dog, a little daschund. He’d help dig my holes when I’d excavate for mud pies. He also kept the snakes away. Maybe. Maybe not.

Anyway, as could be expected of curious little ones, LittleBrother and I wanted to know the names for everything we found. Mama showed us how to find pictures of critters in the Encyclopedia Britannica, to see what they were. Of course, I couldn’t read the words, but I could see the letters. And once LittleBrother went to Kindergarten, he’d tell me more than ever what was written about the things we looked up. And he told me stories about the Arizona tumble weeds, and the dried bones we would find in any or our frequent family excursions to Tombstone and elsewhere, along with bleached and tattered pieces of this and that. If I could only hurry and go to Kindergarten, I’d know all about those things, too!

The memory of the anticipation of, finally, going to Kindergarten is vivid. My teacher was Miss Bokini. She was as round as her smile was wide. I don’t remember any specific thing we did in kindergarten that first day. There is but one thing I recall of that first disappointing day. I didn't learn everything! I cried. I had so expected to learn everything in Kindergarten. I had been in school for a whole day, and still I don’t know it all!

Mama enjoyed telling of my disappointment with Kindergarten. She told of my thinking I could sit in a classroom for a day and know everything ever taught. Yes, she told me, knowing is important, but there's pleasure in life's learning. To Mama, the ability to find my way around an encyclopedia the salesman had said I wouldn’t be ready for for several years yet, fueled her motherly pride. She said I could find anything I wanted to know in those books. And, my insatiable quest to learn everything kept her continually stretching her mind, to sate mine.

I sometimes think of that man, the one who wrote that he learned everything he needed to know in Kindergarten. That’s something like what I wanted to do! But I wanted to learn it all in a single day. I don’t know whether I should be jealous of him, or sorry for him. I realize that the more I learn, the more I learn I don’t know. I still don’t understand why BigBrother was suspended for looking and the little girl continued to not wear panties. Yes, BigBrother kept looking, but he also kept looking to see who was looking at him.

I wish I could tell Mama I’ve discovered that Life is like that first day of Kindergarten. More than just a day, I’ve spent my whole life learning, but I still don’t know it all.

January 2008

aloha!
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