Kindergarten
First day of school. Ever. The transition from not going to school to going to school could not be gentler. I was not afraid. Kindergarten was just a five-minute drive from my house. The sessions only two and a half hours long. The kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Robbins? I’d known her my whole life. I called her Carol. I could see her house from my house. I was over at her house the day before. I swam in her ool over the summer with her three kids who were older than me. I called it the ool because my mother read the sign on the weathered gray fence outside and explained it to me.
Welcome to our ool. Notice there is no p in it. Please keep it that way.
I never hesitated to pee in a pool, but I abstained at the Robbinses’ out of respect for the wit in their admonition.
We waited for the school bus under a young elm tree directly across the street from my house. I was there with Luke Arcuri (535-0485) who kind of looked like a cartoon mouse, big eyes, big ears, big round head. His mother was there. I was friends with Luke, but our relationship was volatile. He’d promise then withdraw invitations to his birthday party several times each year, once citing my failure to finish a slice of the dry birthday cake his mom made as justification. He had excellent stuff, like a player piano. Our favorite thing was playing the song “Alley Cat” on it and dancing like maniacs. This version of the popular instrumental quickly ramped up its tempo, and we frantically tried to keep pace. Eventually it went too fast, and we collapsed on the carpet breathlessly laughing our little red faces off.
Also waiting under the tree was Suzanne Graff with her mother, Margie. I didn’t know her phone number because if I ever wanted to talk with anyone in her house, I walked across the street. I could just walk right in. I didn’t even have to knock! She was as tall as me, with short blond hair and blue eyes. If I had to choose a wife that first day of kindergarten, it would be her. She wore a poncho made of an array of different colored yarn. Every girl there and their mothers praised the flashy cloak. It was handknit by Auntie Risa or Ruthie or maybe Auntie Phyllis or Auntie Elaine or Auntie Irene. She had a lot of aunts who were very involved in her life. All very nice to me. I wore a pair of stiff plaid Toughskins, a brand of pants made for boys that had sewn inside the knee what felt like rhino hide. They were not stylish, but they were uncomfortable. I wore a Winnie-the-Pooh shirt. It was white and had a full-bodied silhouette of the tenderhearted Pooh stitched over my heart. There were some other kids there who I didn’t recognize. They must have lived on a different street.
I carried my Disney World lunch box. It wasn’t from Disney World nor Land, as we’d been to neither. Like my Pooh shirt and my pants, it was from Sears. It had Mickey Mouse and his friends on the lid. I didn’t like Mickey. Never found him or his supporting cast funny. He reminded me of certain grown-ups who talked to kids like we were babies. Nobody in my house talked to me like that.
Luke Arcuri had a Speed Buggy lunch box. He had a lot of excellent things like that. The player piano, bumper pool, a father who lived in the same house with him, and an in-ground pool. Notice the p in it! Luke leaned his Speed Buggy lunch box on the grass against the trunk of the elm and talked to some other kids.
I gazed covetously at that excellent lunch box sitting on the grass. I wished it were mine. It had Speed Buggy on it and a robot. My wildest dreams mingling on the lid of this lunch pail. I had these stupid, corny, baby cartoons on mine. Mickey, Goofy, Donald, some dirty-looking bears in a sleazy band.
Without much deliberation I sneakily pressed my new “worker man” boots on Speed Buggy’s plastic handle. Snap. Uh-oh. I sheepishly looked up from the wreckage and into Mrs. Arcuri’s scowl.
Bewildered, she asked, “Gary, why’d you do that?”
She really stressed the that, drawing it out so that it sounded like thaaat.
I considered her question for a second but decided against the truth. I gave the safest answer I could think of: “I d’know.”
I did know, but I was ashamed to say. I was jealous. I felt bad, though. And not just because I got caught but mostly because I got caught. Before she could cross-examine me any further, Suzanne rescued me.
She started crying wildly. One second, she’s talking with us, graciously accepting compliments on her poncho of many colors and the next she’s bawling, heaving sobs, couldn’t catch her breath. It was difficult to make out the exact nature of her grievance through the blubbering, but the central theme was that she wanted her mommy.
This affliction seemed to be contagious because just as the cheese box pulled up, a different girl staged an identical protest. I understood their trepidation, I guess, but what could be done at this point? The bus was there.
Neither Suzanne nor the other girl could be coaxed aboard. Their moms comforted them, then patiently led them home. Ooh, I gotta remember this: Cry. Go home. As undignified and disturbing as these displays were, it was good to know should the need arise, I could escape by pulling a nutty. It’s too bad about Suzanne—though I must say, I’m grateful that the tantrum distracted from my vandalism.
The bus arrived. The door opened. To my astonishment the driver was nowhere near the door! She sat on a chair high atop a staircase. What is this sorcery? And why am I the only one gasping with delight? This was so excellent! Okay. I get it. No witchcraft. There was a handle that she pulled connected to an arm that collapsed and uncollapsed the door. At some point I must either be allowed to open that door over and over or become a school bus driver. Bus driver instantly outranked being the guy who takes change from people driving over the bridge in my list of things I wanted to be when I grew up. Only telling jokes on television outranked it.
The bus driver was a perfectly delightful woman named Ellie. “Hi, Ellie!” is something I can’t remember not saying, but I don’t remember learning her name. I just knew it. She had dark straight hair down to her shoulders and big glasses. She wore an oversized navy-blue windbreaker. I could tell she liked us. I liked her.
The ride was fun. The first ride I could remember taking where either Auntie Judy or my mom or dad wasn’t driving. We drove around picking up other kindergarteners around the area. A lot of excellent lunch boxes and a lot of laughing and yelling. It was loud, but Ellie maintained her poise at every stop, greeting the tots with her warm smile. I waved at some people in cars and a few of them waved back! Sometimes, there was a commotion. It seemed wanting your mommy was endemic to the community, not just a Rutledge Road phenomenon.
During the ride, when I wasn’t marveling at the hocus pocus of the door, I contemplated the fate of Suzanne. She was the person outside my family I spent the most time with. She was my best friend leading up to and through kindergarten, although I never told anyone because she was a girl. I was over at her house every day. I was surprised by her meltdown because she was strong-willed; whenever we played “house” and she didn’t like my suggestions, she’d fold her arms, turn her back to me, and sulk until I gave in. I’ll tell her about the voodoo door later; maybe that will entice her to give school another shot.
The afternoon bus driver was named Marsha. I don’t think anyone ever said, “Hi, Marsha!” She had thick brown curly hair and wore a lot of makeup and a scowl. She never said a word to us unless it was to correct our behavior. I haven’t thought about Marsha in over forty years, I almost forgot about her. I think about Ellie all the time.
* * *
Carol Robbins was like a version of my mom that was not always on the phone and never watched daytime dramas while I was playing. She sang with us and painted with us and taught us how to print our names. She read to us every day. One book was called Green Eggs and Ham about a real pest named Sam. The following week she made us green scrambled eggs using food coloring.
There were people who visited our classroom, too. I looked forward to Wednesdays, when the elderly frosted-hair music teacher, Mrs. McVann, played violin for us and taught us songs. I loved Thursdays—art with Mrs. Phillips, who passed out paint-splattered smocks for us to wear while we flung all varieties of paint at all kinds of canvases.
I loved school.
In December, we started devoting extra time every morning and afternoon to snow boot and winter coat application. My snorkel-style coat required acquisition of a challenging new skill: zipping. Aligning the two-piece hardware in my throwing hand with the elongated zipper tine in my baseball glove hand, then pulling up on that slider—VWOOOT! It was electrifying. It felt great to no longer be one of those kids who had to wait in line to have their coats zipped up for them by Carol. I could now scoff at those kids. Only shoe tying stood between me and complete self-sufficiency.
I was very comfortable, delighting in my newfound freedom. It was fitting that as we neared the bicentennial, 1976, I, too, was exulting in my liberty.
Later in December, while attending an after-school program, we spun an odd-looking top. Amid an aroma reminiscent of sub-shop french fries I found out I was Jewish. I’d heard the term before but usually as a terse dismissal of my desire for a Christmas tree, an Easter basket, or Hickory Farms summer sausage. It didn’t change much, though it did shed some light on my auntie Judy’s Friday night ritual of placing a paper towel on her head, putting candles on two cans of Libby’s-brand corn, and reciting some mumbo jumbo.
My favorite activity throughout the year was show-and-tell. This amateur hour was a reliably compelling spectacle. A few kids reported on their dogs and cats. One kid told us he had a snake! It was mostly tell, but some kids followed the assignment. There was one kid I called “the boy who is only able or only willing to say ‘dinosaur.’” I called him that because he was only able or only willing to say “dinosaur.” He brought in a plastic Tyrannosaurus rex and of course said “dinosaur” and then made some sounds that could have been made by a Tyrannosaurus. He made those sounds no matter what we were discussing, so it’s hard to say whether his lecture was on topic or not.
One especially memorable performance came from Santino Colombo. Santi rose and enthusiastically announced, “I can snap!” Then, before a rapt but understandably skeptical audience, he delivered on this audacious pledge, snapping his fingers not once but twice! His nervousness and concentration, indicated by his tongue sticking out, were so endearing. It created quite the hubbub as kids tried snapping themselves. Santi beamed in the limelight. Alas, his star turn was short-lived. Before the group snapping could die down, center stage was seized by the victim of my day-one lunch-box sabotage.
Even though Luke already had a turn—presenting a Batman squirt gun (loaded) to much fanfare—he stood up, proclaiming, “I can whistle!”
And he did … with pizzazz. We were all blown away by the virtuosity. Sadly, this ham erased Santi Colombo’s triumph. For in the instrument-less music hierarchy, whistling trumps snapping, as well as clapping and stomping. Poor Santi, he brought a kazoo to a clarinet fight. Hats off to him, though, he handled his fall with quiet dignity and grace, even trying to replicate the whistle, unsuccessfully.
Over time the quality of the weekly production declined. Lying was soon rampant, and when it became clear to everyone that there was no penalty for mendacity, show-and-tell turned farce. I nearly detached both retinas rolling my eyes at some of the fiction. Robin, a raspy-voiced brown-haired pathological claimed to have a container of Play-Doh in her kitchen so large that she used a ladder to climb up into it. Yeah, right! Like it would fit through the front door!
Flustered by the limits my mother put on toys I was allowed to take to school, I succumbed to the stakes and told a whopper one day in service of my comedy aspiration. With a straight face I announced to the entire class: “I can speak French.”
The truth was I could pronounce certain words with a French accent owing to the day my mother and I beat the summer heat by sitting in the Danvers Sack 3 Cinema for three consecutive showings of Peter Sellers in The Return of the Pink Panther. Rich people of the ’70s had air-conditioning; the poor had matinees.
“Pardon me, monsieur, do you have a license for your monkey?”
The rubes bought it. There was much laughter, including from Mrs. Robbins. It was exhilarating. A feeling I was happy to expend all my energy in replicating. I bowed and returned to my seat.
* * *
There is a legend about me that my mom liked to repeat and I loved to hear. Supposedly on my first birthday, just about four years prior, while the entire party watched, I took my first steps. Something equally impressive occurred near another milestone at the end of kindergarten, in June. With less than a week left until kindergarten graduation, on a weekend evening, something clicked, generating unprecedented joy within me. Joy surpassing zipping in December and even riding my bike without training wheels in April. This breakthrough was the highlight of my school year, perhaps even my short life. I read.
I had been building to this moment for most of my life, though not consciously. Certainly Mrs. Robbins’s tutelage helped, but I’d been spellbound by letters and their idiosyncrasies for years. Usually while basking in the sunny days of my beloved Sesame Street. I watched it twice a day. Thanks to Sesame Street I had mastered the alphabet long before Carol started parceling it out three letters at a time.
How fitting, then, that the first book I read on my own was a book featuring my favorite Sesame Street resident, the furry blue cherub Grover. The book was called The Monster at the End of This Book. I’m not sure how the thin hardback landed in my meager home library. It wasn’t new; someone had scribbled in red-violet Crayola on the front inside cover page. Must have been dumped there by a family friend looking to unclutter. They must have been unaware of the treasure buried within this Little Golden Book.
Over the years there were a handful of books that had been read to me. Thank heavens this was not one of them. You see, the first book I was opening blind was a whodunit. What a bonus that no adult had revealed the who. Were it not for this providence, the experience would not have been so divine.
At first, I methodically sounded out every single word, but soon I handled each word seamlessly. I rarely came across words that I had to slow down and sound out, and I noticed that once I sounded out the word one time, it was in me. It was mine. This was excellent. I was learning the shape of words like “afraid” and “scared” and “embarrassed.” I’d used them a thousand times, but who knew that they had all been assigned these distinct forms?
Using my new skill was thrilling on its own, but what was lifting this endeavor to the level of sublime was the story. The Monster at the End of This Book was a riveting thriller from page one. Nay, from the cover.
On the opening page, Grover shared his dismay over the implications of the title. He, like the reader, is afraid of monsters. He pleaded with me to protect him by not turning the page, thereby avoiding the end where the monster awaits. I was just sure it was the Count. Count Von Count—the lavender-colored Dracula-like puppet with a widow’s peak, goatee, and fangs—scared the bejesus out of me. While the Street was teeming with monsters, the Count was the only one who seemed dangerous. Why would a children’s show endorse vampirism?
Grover’s increasing horror as each page was turned was funny in its melodrama, but I was torn. I felt for him because he was so afraid. I, too, was concerned about the monster but felt safe because my mother and brother Max were nearby to protect me. But poor Grover was all alone. Of course I was dying to find out how the book ended. Also, there were words left to decode, which had quickly become my favorite thing to do. I was giddy. There were these mysteries all over every page. In a book that was itself a mystery!
As the potboiler unfolded, Grover kept erecting more elaborate buttresses to prevent the reader from turning the page. A complex web of ropes, a fence of wooden boards, and finally a sturdy brick wall. All demolished by turning pages. But the barrier Monster broke that I found most enchanting was the fourth wall.
Grover was talking to me! After I turned a page, demolishing the brick wall, he said, “Do you know that you are very strong?”
Ha! Thanks, Grover! I am very strong. I do cry sometimes, but my dad said my throws hurt his hand when I play catch with him.
While I felt for Grover—he was a guileless lamb—I couldn’t stop reading. I had to know how it ended! Ignoring Grover’s most desperate pleas, I gingerly turned the final page. I found out who the monster was and was spun silly by the O. Henry twist. The monster at the end of The Monster at the End of This Book was:
Grover.
My word. I did not see that coming. I sat with this revelation for a spell, letting the ending sink in, relieved that Grover and I were safe. The monster was just Grover. I caught my breath and got right back to chasing that high. I took every book in the house and tested my new trick, reading, on them. There wasn’t a book in our house whose secrets this technique couldn’t unlock. I was delirious. And it was just the beginning.
* * *
Last day of kindergarten. It was warm enough that I didn’t have to wear a jacket. I wore the tie-dye shirt I made in art class earlier that spring, a pair of dark blue dungarees, and a brown belt that had excellent little plastic jewels screwed on. At a morning assembly we honored the marketing gimmick that was the bicentennial by singing “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” an upbeat, phony marching song. It reminded me of Donny & Marie, a show that my mom and brothers and I gathered to ridicule every Friday night.
Auntie Judy came with my mother. Judy Siegel was my mom’s best friend and my godmother. She was very pretty, with blond hair and a very small, straight nose and blue eyes. I always kissed her when I went to her house, which was every day before I started going to school. I love her. She treated me like I was one of her kids.
The best thing about the last day of school was that Ellie had descended from her throne and joined us for the celebration. Seeing Ellie out of her bus driver’s seat was disorienting, like the episode of Sesame Street when Bert danced the Pigeon and you could see his whole body. Where did his legs come from? She talked with Auntie Judy and my mother like they were friends. I knew they would like Ellie. Everyone liked Ellie. And there Ellie was, just drinking Hawaiian Punch and eating the Black Forest cake, made by the father of the boy who was only able to or only willing to say “dinosaur.” Ellie was so regular.
Everyone with a summer birthday—I’m July 17—got a cupcake with their name on it. Throughout the year, kids with birthdays would get to wear a construction paper crown all day and their moms would bring in cake and they’d get spanked five or six times by Carol and then pinched to guarantee they’d grow an inch. I never bought in. I recognized the value of not going to school on your birthday. Keep your crown; I’ll be watching The Price Is Right and eating cereal on the couch.
I waited in a hug-Ellie line and then hugged Mrs. Robbins, who I slyly told I’d see at the ool. I went home in Auntie Judy’s Chevy Caprice. She and my mother were still raving about the Black Forest cake. I was looking forward to this summer and not at all dreading next school year. I loved school. Also, I had known my first-grade teacher even longer than I had known Carol.
I learned a lot that year: how to zip a jacket, ride a bike, write my name, read, and that the monster at the end of your book is probably you.
June 2017
For most of my life summer brought certain bliss. All obligations, grudges, and concerns deferred until September. And I always loved celebrating my birthday. Through two previous summers of acute depression, I yearned for that feeling. Though I recognized it as irrational, I indulged a recurring daydream about a portal I could enter where I would be a child again when every morning the sense and scents of heat and sunlight in the air would spring me out of bed to see what was doing on my street.
There is no bliss on June 27, 2017. I want to stay in this full-sized bed in the corner of my old room and milk the relief, the abridged oblivion sleep provides. I surrender.
The one thing preventing me from sleeping the day away are my two brown-and-white male Cavalier King Charles spaniels: Sandy, aged nine, and Igor, eleven. I’ve had them since they were puppies and brought them with me from New York. Sandy was named after the left hand of G-d, Sandy Koufax, and Igor (pronounced eye-gor), after the assistant in Young Frankenstein. Igor was the more insistent of the two. Sandy was athletic and trim, but Igor was aggressive, dominant. When we played ball at the beach, Sandy would get to the ball first every single time, then immediately drop it once Igor caught up and barked for it. Igor dictates the length and locus of our walks. During regular visits to my mom’s, he’s discovered his favorite neighborhood spots for his interests.
This first day he is determined to reacquaint himself with Willowbrae Park. A two-minute walk from our house, Willowbrae contains a playground as well as the bisecting asphalt path kids have used for fifty years to walk from my neighborhood to our designated elementary school, West Memorial. On this “day one” of my convalescence, we find the playground a total disaster. I take some comfort in the notion that, unlike Madonna, I’ll never have to bemoan the decline of my playground. It was never good. It is in the exact same condition it was forty years earlier when I first walked the battered path to first grade with my then best friend, Wally Mitler.
Copyright © 2023 by Gary Gulman
