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Friday, March 30, 2012

All I Really Need to Know I Learned at Recess

I tend to wax a bit peevish when people go on about how everything they need to know was learned in kindergarten.

Now, I must disclose that mine was not a premiere private kindergarten with $10,000 annual tuition and a waiting list.  My kindergarten was a quarter mile away, up a dusty road and taught by our neighbor Mrs. Jones.  Our classroom was in the basement and recess was on the front lawn where there was always a fight over the homemade teeter totter.  Supplies and field trips were minimal.  The snack was a half slice of homemade wheat bread and tap water.
If I had been satisfied with the knowledge I acquired during my fifth year of life, I would still...

  • Be wearing pigtails
  • Have a lifelong unrequited crush on Peter, the kid with the pumpkin noggin and a love for paste
  • Believe that "holding it in" until recess was worth a gold star on my chart
  • Be reading about Dick, Jane and Sally who only communicated in 3 letter words and were the most boring family on earth
  • Be so gullible that I believe people like my Uncle Jake when he told me that a cockle burr was a porcupine egg and that if I tucked it in my armpit it would hatch


Instead.
 
I moved on
soaking in knowledge like an organic sea sponge
growing and maturing until
now I too
can solemnly present the cockle burr of knowledge 
to my newly minted kindergarten-aged grandson, Liam
 so he can hatch his own porcupine of wisdom. 


15 comments:

just call me jo said...

It's difficult to find cockle burrs
in AZ, I find. Did you save some from childhood? Sand burrs--heck yes. We got 'em. Your grandson will be so appreciative some day.

Unknown said...

you were a ball of cute.

tuck it in your armpit? ouch.

karen said...

*ahem* Yes, I believe we've all acquired similar gems of knowledge along the way. Mine was that swallowing tons of watermelon seeds does not a watermelon patch in your stomach make. It does, however, give you the runs.

Susan Anderson said...

And to add to Karen's comment...Mine was not to lick the ice tray.

"/

PS. Liam looks like a winner!

Holly said...

I would still be cutting my bangs with blunt scissors. You were a darlin. Still are.

Unknown said...

I would still be devising ways of skipping school.
Cute post. Teach him all he needs to know. :)

SherilinR said...

teehee! i hope he hatches a lovely fountain of wisdom with his pit pricker!

esbboston said...

I was fortunate enough to have a kindergarten teacher for a mother, so I was entertained by tales of tiny folks for decades! I wish my mother would have wrote a book.

Robyn said...

LOL What an awesome post.. Really enjoyed it :)

CB said...

He He enjoyed this so much - and what a cute little girl you were:-)
I would be at an audio center with huge headphones on and wearing shorts under my dresses.

Lisa Ricard Claro said...

Have to state the obvious: Liam is adorable!

I was deprived. Never went to kindergarten. From your description it sounds like I actually kinda lucked out!

kate said...

...or believing Uncle Dean (or Steve) when he tells you he lost his fingers because he picked his nose too much.

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

Oh, that Uncle Jake! a prickly sense of humor. Great post.:)

joanne fox said...

Ah, the tales they tell us when we are kids. I still remember the smell of the paint in infant school. And being sick in the classroom sink. And what came out being, for some reason, purple.

A Zigzag Road

Pondside said...

I learned not to stick my tongue onto the poles of the monkey bars in winter.