School can only do so much for you. To this day, I always have to look up the spelling of Anne Boleyn's name, and I am constantly spelling "magnificent" as "magnificient."
There are dead zones in my head, that's the only explanation, despite the fact I have been through kindergarten five times now. First, I went myself, a harrowing experience. I wore oversized cowboy boots back then -- lots of kids did -- and I walked at such weird angles and tumbled down stairs so frequently that the teachers were pretty sure I was "special."
This was aggravated by the fact that my mother sent me off to kindergarten a little early. I had just turned 2.
Anyway, I have been through kindergarten five times now, if you include the experiences with my own four children. The littlest one, golden as a baseball glove, is finishing up his kindergarten career now, as we speak. It is a drizzly day, and he and his classmates don't even realize that it is raining on the playground, where the year-end recital is to be held. Some things about kindergarten never change.
"Inside, everybody!" screams the mom with the biggest mouth, and they push-cram 100 kids and parents into a room built for 20 or so elves.
Yep, kindergarten never changes. There is construction paper all over the wall, lots of cotton clouds. Early in the program, the kids sing about whales.
Baby beluga in the deep blue sea,
swim so wild and you swim so free
"They're singing about caviar?" I ask Posh.
"Shhhhhhhsh," Posh says.
"Shhhhhhhsh," say the other moms.
At least I think they're singing about caviar. These kids are missing so many teeth, they slurp the lyrics as if sputtering their way through a hot bowl of soup.
Baby beluga, baby beluga, is the water warm?
baby beluga, is your mama home?
I informed Posh the other day that I am absolutely not going to any more of these suburban events where they don't serve liquor.
"Hard stuff," I said, "and I don't care about mixers."
It was a Fatherly Proclamation. I issue only about 40 or 50 such proclamations a week, and like the others, the alcohol mandate was promptly dismissed, even though I roared it like Henry VIII, in a way that showed I wasn't kidding.
So, I find myself at this recital, sober and surrounded by people I don't really know. That's OK. Between kindergarten and his sister's upcoming graduation, we only have about a hundred such events to go.
