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Ahhhh…the good ol’ days. This is my submission for the Kindergarten – A Memoir Prompt from Kim M.O…
Kindergarten, or kindeegarden, is full of memories for me. The teacher, Mrs. Weatherall, was a gray haired elderly woman who stood proud and firm, while her assistant, Mrs. Green, was a huge black woman; think Michael Clarke Duncan with a heedful of thick, black hair. Okay, I’m sure there is a bit of scale here, after all, I was five and everything taller than 5 and a half feet was huge.
I remember making the balloon. Do you? You know, everyone holds hands while standing in the middle of the floor? We started out all bunched together as tight as we could, and then Mrs. Weatherall would tell us to fill our cheeks with breath and blow as hard as we could while stepping backwards. We blew and stepped, blew and stepped, until we formed a perfect circle of 5 year olds.
Hyperventilation was the drug free enticement into nap time.
The school year was 1963-64 and the boys (me included) seemed to have discovered a few things that would work well when combined; namely Crayola crayons and Godzilla movies. There were pictures that contained any number of scenes where a large green object with one serrated edge (presumably Godzilla) was in a mighty struggle against stick figures wearing upside down bowls on their heads (arguably the bravest army in the world; scrawny men battling Godzilla couldn’t be cowards) littering the tables and walls of our kindeegarden room.
There were silhouettes made, hand turkeys, and funky construction paper valentines (valentimes for the grammatically challenged). A herd of milk drank, many square yards of cookies eaten, and at least one earthworm made its way into Jeff Simpson’s gullet.
I missed the last week or so of kindeegarden. The family doc diagnosed me with Rheumatic Fever and sent me to the hospital.
For ten days, I lay in that hospital bed and was subjected to all kinds of tests and many penicillin shots. I was getting worse by the hour; that is until someone made the brilliant observation that I was allergic to penicillin. Not a moment too soon, because I may have died after one more injection of the miracle poison.
I have never imagined that there was a suave Ben Casey type doctor who rushed into the room, John Woo style, and at the last possible moment, knocked what would have been the fatal dose out of a nurse’s hand.
Nor have I entertained visions of a hair thin lab tech wearing a floor length lab coat (you know the ones; white with a single column of buttons that are off center), thick rubber elbow length gloves, and a pair of welder’s dark goggles, staring into the huge dials of a menacingly sterile machine and screaming, “Eureka!”
No, I pretty much see old Doc Sherman sitting in his oak paneled office, long cigarette ash barely clinging to the Chesterfield clamped between his index and middle fingers, and clutching charts between his hands. I can picture the eternally old man reaching through the wisps of smoke for his desk phone (one of those ginormous black phones that had the receiver/transmitter that weighed 2.5 tons), tugging on the rotary dial, and serenely telling some nurse on the other side of town to not administer any more injections.
This was the same doctor who six years later had to have me show him where to turn on the saw so he could take the cast off my leg.
I was never frightened at the hospital. In fact it was all a fun curiosity as far as I was concerned. We were even entertained for a few minutes one day by the Smothers Brothers, so I am told, but it all fun and circus surroundings came to an end and I was sent home.
School was out, but waiting for me at home was a grand present, in a small brown paper bag, from my former classmates. I opened the bag and dumped the contents onto the dining room table. All of my friends had made “Get Well Soon” cards; all but one.
I unfolded the only non-card in the bag and saw written, in various sized and awkward letters, Billy Stackler written across the top of a picture.
Godzilla was falling backwards, red crayon streaks coming from his chest, and the stick figure army men were yelling, “Yay!”
© 2010, Alex Crabtree. All rights reserved.
Kindeegarden and #Godzilla http://goo.gl/fb/VEMv6 #memoirs #alexcrabtree #kindergarten #memoirs
What a wonderful memory of kindeegarten you wove for us!
Wish I could remember that much about kindergarten. I really enjoyed your imaginative descriptions of the things you did not imagine.
Do you still keep in touch with Billy Stacker?
Sadly enough, no. Billy’s family moved away that summer.
This captures not just concrete memories, but something of the character of the kindergarten classroom and its inhabitants as well.
I think my mother was allergic to penicillin,too. It took her to a more advanced age to run into trouble from it.
Such a vivid telling, brought back wonderful memories of my kindeegarden days. I could just squeeze Billy’s freckled little cheeks