Growing Up In the Middle

3

School. What a chill went down my spine when I heard this word. While we were in Hinton I attended kindergarten through grade 2. Most children would dread moving as much as we did, but in the three short years in school in Hinton I scarred myself so severely I was glad to pack and head anywhere. At the time I don’t remember if I was happy or upset, but I know if I had graduated with the children I started school with things would have been much different. For starters, I would not have been as popular in high School as I was – not that I was popular – just that it would have been much worse!

Kindergarten. For some reason I loved Kindergarten. We had a rabbit in our class, and he was frequently out of his cage. If we found any rabbit “treats”, we were to place them in his cage. I loved to play house with the girls, and fortunately at this age it is too early for teasing. The boys in my class were very fun as well and I remember nothing bad happening at school – in fact I recall being able to paint with my fingers, and I think I even aced a verbal test where the teacher read a word and I gave her the opposite. To this day I am very skilled at opposites.

Outside school at this age was a different matter completely. I started swimming lessons after school and hated them intensely. I likely weighed 27 pounds and looked like a grape with four toothpicks sticking out of it. At this type of body fat percentage, every pool feels like an arctic dipping tub. I never really learned to swim, but if you are looking for someone to stand in the shallow end and shiver, knock knees, and turn blue – I’m your man. These sessions were beyond painful. I have repressed these feelings for almost thirty years; as I can’t even find any humor in them…except…

Okay, at five I was concerned with the impression I would make changing in the ladies locker room every time, as my mom was the parent supervising me. I was a cool kid and I can’t have the girls in my swim class thinking I’m a dork. Isn’t it bad enough that I never swam? I never dived for the rings, I just held on to the edge of the pool and shivered. Most of the time I had to go with the ladies, but this one time for some reason Mom listened to me: I got to change in the men’s locker room. Mom felt that no dad’s would be there, since there seldom was one, this was the seventies, after all, and men worked while the wife stayed home with the kids. This being considered, Mom came into the men’s locker room with me.

I don’t know what she was thinking. So I was changed and mom was in a toilet stall getting into her suit when a man came in. I failed to see the problem as I was but five and we did not have the continuous exposure to s*x as we do on modern television to educate us about the subtle differences between men and women. In retrospect the man was extremely uncomfortable, he did a double-take at the door as he looked at the sign to confirm that he was in fact in the right room. I continued talking to Mom as she always wanted to know where we were, and this time I am not sure she wanted me talking to her. She got really quiet, and now it was my turn to worry. “Mom!” Nothing. “Mom, are you there?” Where did I think she went? I had obviously seen enough TV to know there are secret passages in most bathrooms, and there was the possibility of the Flush Monster!

Don’t ask me to explain this one. I just was scared whenever I had to flush that there was ‘something’ there. Was it the noise, or all the motion of swirling water, I’m not sure – maybe both. It just freaks me out…I mean freaked me out. Yeah, freaked me out – I’m totally over that now.

What is a mother to do in this situation, her son is screaming for her in the men’s room, she had to say something. She came out, never looked up for a second – just grabbed my arm and dragged me to the pool in about three steps. I knew my dad could run fast, but mom really surprised me that day. Suffice it to say if I wanted to change in the boys room, I was on my own after that. This was a proposition that carried it’s own risks due to sticky zippers, shoelaces, and that whole toilet phobia…but I’m getting ahead of myself. Why was the water so cold? I could have Olympic swimming potential, but I will never know, since the one thing I took lessons for as a child was wasted due to poor water temperature. If you are going to have small children in your pool, you should heat it to an appropriate temperature for our obvious lack of body fat. I was absolutely blue after every lesson. My hands were numb, and when we got out, I could hardly walk from the whole-body shiver that enveloped me. My knees knocked and my teeth actually clattered. Have you ever been so physically cold that your teeth actually clatter? It is not pleasant.

Other than the swimming thing and the occasional rabbit turd mistaken for a raisin, Kindergarten went along just swell. We didn’t really talk like that. The seventies were almost over and I never saw ‘The Brady Bunch’ until it was in re-runs in the 1990’s.

Grade one was a different story, and it kept getting worse from there. I missed the day we learned how to tell time on hands on a clock. You can’t catch up from something like that. I think it was a substitute teacher the next week, because I kept getting all the reviews wrong and was simply baffled by the entire process. To this day the sight of hands on a clock give me chills. Digital clocks were nothing new, they are easy to set and you have endless possibilities as to where you might put one – ie: VCR, stove, dash of car, pen, ring, pendant. What was the big hang-up about learning to tell time? It was very traumatizing for me, as I am basically a bright kid and a good student.

I also have vivid memories of my grade one teacher holding me after class until I spelled “OWL” properly. Can they still do this? I don’t have kids, but if I am waiting outside in the car and my kid’s teacher holds him after class for something stupid like that, I would have a conniption. If the kid pulls the fire alarm, sets something or someone on fire, or steals, cheats, or tells a lie – by all means punish the little brat. If for some reason an otherwise gentle child mis-spells a three-letter word and has a total brain meltdown over it, the kind thing to do would be to let them have the weekend to look it up. I learn from my mistakes, and I have never spelled “owl” improperly since then (hope you believe this, since it is only three letters). Nope, my teacher held me in, and my parents had the car loaded and we were on our way out of town for the weekend. The whole trip delayed because I could not spell a simple three-letter bird! O…L…E – No, try again.

The fact that I remember little else from this school year shows the damage that seemingly innocent actions can have on a small child. I worried that my parents left without me, and how would I get in the house, was there anything good to eat in the garage, and is going to the bathroom in your own garden illegal? A…O…L - No, try again.

I considered setting something or someone on fire just as a distraction, since the punishment I was enduring was already so horrible – how could it get worse. Surely my brothers waited for me (HAH!) and they would come looking and call mom and dad and the whole thing would be settled by phone and my teacher would apologize to me. A…W…L – No Kevin, you are not trying. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGG! If I wasn’t just three feet tall and forty pounds soaking wet I would have got violent with her.

Man, did I hear about that one on the whole trip. I never got held after school, but you would think I was a repeat offender the way my parents talked – Duane didn’t help any either. He was happy for once the focus of bad scholastic news was far from him and he was basking in the spotlight.

Really, two bad memories of school is not such a terrible thing. Most of my Memories are from before and after school. Let me tell you about a little thing called “breakfast”.