In Trouble in a Flash
When I was four years old, I informed my parents that I was going to school. If any tears were shed that first day, they were my mother’s. I happily plopped myself down in a tiny chair and dismissed her: “Ok, Mom, you can go shopping now.”
I don’t know what I expected from the Kindergarten experience. I had known my letters (uppercase and lowercase) since I was eighteen months old. I was trying to read by two. I knew right from left. If I hoped for a challenge, there was none to be found. Except for shoe tying, which I made my parents teach me the same day I was humiliated by my sense of failure. It was all their fault, I informed them. They always bought me shoes with buckles.
Academically, Kindergarten was a bore, so I found other means to amuse myself. My mother would tell you this is why she picked me up from the principal’s office every day. I believe that my mother grossly exaggerates the facts. I have no recollection of spending most of the school year in the principal’s office. And even if I did, I deny being in trouble. Because, you see, bad kids sat at the “Shame Shame Desk” and I couldn’t have ever been sent to the Shame Shame Desk. I’m certain of that because it was permanently occupied by Claudia. I remember nothing else about Claudia, except that clearly she was the naughty little girl.
Now, I won’t claim that I never went to the principal’s office. Because it’s simply not true. I did spend a fair amount of time there due to my attempts to entertain myself. Most of my punishable offenses occurred during nap time. There was no AM/PM Kindergarten. We went to school full days. Somebody decided that it was necessary for us to nap for a portion of the afternoon. Maybe my teacher needed a break . . . or at least a martini, but I didn’t require rest time. I never slept but once, and I swear that woman drugged me. When another student finally woke me up, I got the sense that nap had long since been over. It was probably the happiest day of my educator’s life.
Anyway, generally nap time was the perfect time for me to create a disturbance. One day I was off my mat trying to catch a bug. Another day I started screaming that Stephanie was eating green spiders from under the stage. And then there was the flashing incident.
I’m not exactly sure how it started, perhaps quite innocently, but I discovered one afternoon that boys found undershirts hilarious. Well, once I realized I had a captive audience, I was pulling my shirt up and down repeatedly to elicit those squeals of delight. First I would lift my top slowly, coy and calculating. Then I’d feign surprise. “Oh my God! You can see my undergarments!” I’d pull my shirt back down quickly and blush with maiden shame. It got roars of laughter every time.
Who knows how long this went on before the teacher realized we were having way too much fun for sleeping children. I was perfecting the nuances of my shocked expression when I heard her call my name. I walked over to her slowly, my head hanging.
“Why were you lifting your shirt up?” she asked.
“I had some lint itching me,” I said to my shoes.
“Let me see your tongue,” she commanded.
We were regularly warned that if we told lies, black spots would appear on our tongues. I believed this wholeheartedly . . . until the day I told the truth and still wound up with a black spot. In that instant I realized that there never were any telltale marks to report our sins. The teacher had been lying to catch liars! The hypocrisy sickened me. I wanted to jump up on a chair, point at her and yell, “Mrs. Winnick is full of shit!”
On the day of the flashing incident, however, I believed in the black spot more strongly than I believed in Santa Claus, so I stuck out my tongue quickly before the mark had a chance to appear.
I think, I think I was sent back to my mat unpunished. I don’t remember for sure, but I suspect that if I had wound up in the office for my antics, my mother would still today be regaling strangers with the story of the nap time striptease at our fine Catholic elementary school.