School Memories: The Kindergarten Years* (Part II)

I mentioned in my first kindergarten memory post that while most of the memories are happy ones, there is one that had a long-lasting, negative impact on me.  This private school I attended allowed teachers to spank the students with a wooden paddle.  They didn't even have to be sent to the principal!  This is not a good idea.  Would you send your child to a school where any teacher having a bad day or a bad year can take out their frustrations on your child?  I don't remember any other spankings I may have gotten at school and can't tell you how many there may have been.  But there was one instance I have never been able to forget. 

I was in class with all my fellow students when Mrs. Browder, my teacher, had to leave the room for several minutes.  She left the door open, and while we tried to remain quiet, of course being only 5 years old we weren't completely successful.  At one point, I was talking to the girl next to me and admiring her dress, which had a tiny, soft velvet bow at her neckline.  Five-year-old girls like soft things.  I felt her little bow and for some reason was really impressed with it and decided to express myself by yelling "Mommy!"  I know, it doesn't make any sense.  But the point is not what I said, but the fact that I said that one word loudly enough for the teacher across the hall to hear me and become irate with me.  She stormed over to our classroom and asked who it was who made that noise.  Being an honest person, I raised my hand.  This woman was one of the Mean Teachers that every student dreads. Her name was Mrs. Parsley, and I don't think I ever saw her smile. She pulled me out of the classroom and dragged me into another room.  It was probably just an empty classroom, but I remember it as being a dark storage closet.  She pulled my dress up and spanked me quite harshly with her wooden paddle. 

After she paddled me, she marched me into her classroom of 2nd graders and made me stand in front of all of those big kids, my face tear-stained and my feelings sorely abused.  (Not to mention my posterior!)  I had to apologize to all those older students for disrupting their class.  I was always a shy child, so this was extremely humiliating and stressful for me.  Even if I had been there for a positive reason, it would have been embarrassing.  And to have to do this in front of the big kids, with tears streaming down my face?  Horrifying.  This woman wasn't even my teacher!  I said ONE WORD loudly enough for her to hear.  She caused more of a disruption to her class with her attack on me than I could have possibly caused with my actions. 

At the time, being as young as I was, I had no idea how inappropriate her actions were.  She was a teacher, an adult, a figure of authority.  It never even occurred to me to tell my parents.  After I was older, I realized just how inappropriate her actions were.  She should have waited for MY teacher to return and told her what I did and let Mrs. Browder discipline me as she saw fit.  She shouldn't have been allowed to grab any random child in passing and lay her hands on them because she felt entitled to do so.  (I wonder how many other students she disciplined who weren't her responsibility.  She probably kicked puppies too.)  I'm assuming she told Mrs. Browder what transpired, but I don't remember her ever speaking to me about it.  If she did, it didn't bear remembering.  I would recall the event often as I grew older, and knew that I was still angry about it.  I have always been grateful that my parents moved me and my brothers to public school after I finished 1st grade, so I never had to have Mrs. Parsley as my teacher!  I never realized how deeply I was affected by this event until sometime during college. 

My extended family was having a 4th of July get-together at the lake.  My grandmother, who still went to the church that was affiliated with the school I attended, invited Mrs. Parsley to the party!  I didn't even know they were friends, but I can tell you that even a bazillion years after I had last seen that woman, I recognized her on the spot.  (I could probably sense her evil aura pulsating through the hot summer air as dark storm clouds appeared out of nowhere to blanket the sun.) I can't begin to tell you how ambushed I felt to see her there.  My own grandmother brought the enemy into our camp!  I had to politely greet this woman when all I wanted to do was toss her into the lake.  And even then, I still thought I was only offended and angry.  As everyone else was outside enjoying the beautiful day, my mom and I went into the house to make some banana pudding.  We were talking and I decided to relate to her the story of that horrible day back in kindergarten.  I started telling her the story, and promptly burst into tears.  Big tears of anger and humiliation that I had apparently still been harboring.  That stupid woman had scarred me! My mom was understandably upset and wished I had told her then.  If only I had thought to do so, I may have gotten over it sooner.

That my dear readers, is my worst school memory.

*Despite the title of these posts, I only spent one year in kindergarten.  But "The Kindergarten Year" just sounded wrong. 

Photo found here.

School Memories: The Kindergarten Years (Part 1)

I guess all this trying-to-become-a-teacher stuff has been what's brought up all the memories of my own school days.  It's sometimes surprising how clearly I can recall some of the things I do from so long ago.  I have a lot of memories from kindergarten, one of them which scarred me more deeply than I realized until a few years ago.  (More about that one in Part 2.) 

I had a really nice teacher when I was in K5 - her name was Mrs. Browder.  I also had a boyfriend.  His name was Charles and when I look back at my yearbooks, I still think he was kind of cute.  :)  I was apparently mature at a very early age.  We dated all the way through kindergarten and first grade, when our puppy love was torn asunder by my move to Public School.  Oh, if I had only known how to be angst-y at that age, I could have honed my drama skills early! 

Where was I? 

Oh yeah, kindergarten.  I'm not sure how much my K5 experience compares to others, but we learned how to DANCE.  Not like tap or jazz or ballet or anything.  I don't actually know what kind it was, but I'm sure it would have been appropriately conservative.  I mean, it's not like Mom would have been dropping Charles and me off at the local club for a session of bumping and grinding. Not like this kid who is learning how to dance from exposure to Beyonce videos.  How can I compete?  Anyway, back to me!  Whenever it was time for our dance lessons, all the girls had to line up on the wall and the boys would choose their dance partners.  (See, totally conservative!  Proper girls didn't ask boys to dance back in the early 80's!)  Charles of course always picked me.  Awwww...  And then there was always ONE dance where the girls had to choose a boy to dance with for the Sadie Hawkins version of dance lessons.  And of course I always picked him.

Does anybody actually know who Sadie Hawkins is, by the way?  I feel the need to know this now for some reason.  *searches the interwebz for info...*

Holy crap!  Okay, I know it was considered forward for a girl to ask a boy out or for a dance or whatever, but I never realized quite how condescending this whole Sadie Hawkins thing is!  Prepare to be insulted.  (Or maybe it's just me.) 

I also remember playing outside on the playground.  Being a private Christian school, all the girls were required to wear dresses.  Which meant we had to wear the appropriate hosiery and dress shoes.  Do you know how infuriating it is to try to play on dew-slicked grass in a pair of slippery dress shoes?  We played things like Red Light, Green Light; Mother May I; and Duck, Duck, Goose. That last one was one I particularly hated.  For any of you who may have been spared this game as a child, everyone sits in a circle with one person being chosen as "It".  That person walks around the outside of the circle tapping each player on the head and saying "Duck, Duck..." over and over until they choose to name one player the "Goose".  The "Goose" then has to chase the other person around the circle and the first person back to the empty spot is the winner and the one left standing takes over being "It".  Of course I could never run properly because I had to try to keep from slipping on the grass (and really, aren't kindergarteners vertically-challenged enough?) and letting my dress fly up over my head and/or shredding my pantyhose.  I hated being forced to play that game.  No wonder so many girls seem to be less physically active then boys.  Put those boys in a dress, pantyhose, and some patent leather Mary Janes and see how well they can run!  This same dress code meant the girls weren't allowed to play on the monkey bars because the boys would be able to look up our dresses.  Um, maybe you should keep the pervert boys away so the girls can use them too?  No wonder I have no upper arm strength.

I Can Tie My Shoes!

I've been thinking a lot about the memories I have from when I was in school and growing up.  There seems to be at least one bold memory that has survived the years for each grade in school. I'm not quite sure exactly how old I was during some memories, but many of them have details that remind me of how old I was.  Kathy of The Junk Drawer recently posted a question asking her readers what our very first memories were.  The only early memory I could truly date was in K-4 (preschool).  Our first day of class, I was the first student to arrive and the teacher, Mrs. Dudley, had placed our names on the desks.  She asked me if I could find my desk.  I guess I couldn't read yet, or at least not well enough to know my name, and I picked the wrong desk.  But I think I did get the first letter right.  I also remember sitting on the floor of her classroom with a bunch of donated shoes and learning how to tie shoelaces.  Now they have all kinds of nifty books and toys to help you learn to tie shoes.  I'm a little bit jealous.

If I want to get technical, I remember what must be an earlier memory, when I almost drowned in the pond in our backyard .  Except I don't remember the actual incident. I thought I had dreamed it for the longest

time.  And I also remember playing in the nursery at the first school I went to, with those giant cardboard blocks that were painted to look like bricks.  I don't know how old I was there though.  It could have just been after class while we waited to be picked up by our parents.  Does anyone remember those blocks?  They were pretty awesome.  They still make them too!  You could make some pretty nifty forts out of these things. 

First photo found here.
Second photo found here.