Tales From Exit 22 by Al Batt

About 30 years ago, I read, “All I Really Need To Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” a book of short essays by clergyman and author Robert Fulghum.

I enjoyed the book. Here are the things Fulghum wrote that he had learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.

I don’t remember kindergarten. I’m sure my teacher was wonderful, but I went just long enough to catch diseases like measles, mumps or chicken pox and be sent home. I think they must have taught kids how to tie their shoes in kindergarten. I missed that, and I’m not accomplished at securing shoestrings.

I loved those Dick-and-Jane books. I think of them often, and I look. I think those books fostered my curiosity. Albert Einstein said this about himself, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

Our classroom appeared to be bereft of Einsteins, but we had Dick and Jane, so we were OK.

The first class I have clear memories of was the first grade. Mrs. Demmer taught both first- and second-grade students in one of three classrooms in a school that was in town. I never attended a country school, but I wasn’t many miles from one.

I recall sitting in the small classroom and being intimidated by what I perceived as its mammoth size. The school seemed larger than the outdoors. I looked around at my first-grade classmates. I don’t mean this to sound cruel, but they struck me as a bunch of weirdoes. I thought perhaps a spaceship from the planet Grzxyndork had dropped them off at the school.

In truth, they were no weirder than first-graders were supposed to be. On the weirdness scale, I no doubt led the class.

Mrs. Demmer did a great job in molding our minds of mush into mushy minds. There was only so much she could have done. Look what she had to work with.

First grade was hard. It was all new. I spent most of time sharpening pencils, drinking from the water fountain, raising my hand in requests to go to the bathroom and tying my shoes improperly. First grade was an odd stew of blunt scissors, white paste, colorful construction paper, claims pending with the Tooth Fairy for wiggly teeth and dreams of snow days. We did all of this without a salary. My father said we were lucky the school didn’t require a damage deposit.

Second grade was easy. We’d heard it all before if we’d managed to stay awake while we were in the first grade.

As scary as it was, I loved the first grade. It was there that I learned to count to one. Recess rocked and I loved my teacher; it takes a big heart to shape small minds. I was taken by the good work of our school custodian and cook. The cook, obviously overqualified for her job, prepared lunches that were nearly outlawed because they were too good. There was concern that they might set a precedent and that all school lunches would be required to be edible.

We were told that we were living in the good old days. We were never to wish that we were older because that was wishing our lives away. That even applied to wishing that a Monday were a Saturday.

I learned all the things in the first grade that Robert Fulghum had learned in kindergarten.

I’m a late bloomer, I suppose.

I’m still hoping to conquer the whole tying shoes thing.

Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.