School Daze

I miss school.

A co-worker and I were reminiscing about kindergarten this morning. Here's what I remember from that milestone year:

• "homework", particularly learning the letter "e"--we had to make an envelope, then cut out all these things and put in the envelope everything that started with the letter e.
  
• playing "house" with the bossy pretty girl and her friends, and the boy she liked (who got roped in and clearly wasn't all that interested). she insisted that there could be no more kids, so I had to be the dog. I got rabid and bit everyone, and it was basically all downhill from there as we then started playing werewolf attack . . .
  
• losing some teeth (the natural way) and being sent home with a baggie
  
• jungle gyms and fastest slide times, swings and kicking up dirt clouds
  
• naptime and the "go to sleep" mandate of the naptime 'fairy' who got to use the special naptime wand to make us all zonk out
  
• struggling in vain to learn to tie my shoes at home and never getting it right, and then when we had to do it at school (it was a test on a paper cutout!) I panicked and somehow just did it perfectly the first time!! My paper shoe was red.
  
• lessons in proper coloring method: color in the same direction inside the lines, not every which way just to make it fit
  
• reading. reading the page to myself faster than the chick across the room could read it out loud. I loved to read
  
• my parents split that year, and mom moved us to VA--somehow I ended up accidentally stealing my Dick and Jane books--found them years later
  
• playing indoor chase and soccer with the boys instead of playing house and pretend ironing and cooking with the girls. bleh. although, i do have to say John Kerr had a sweet 'house' set up with wooden ironing boards and little sinks and crap
  
• painting a brown seal in a caged circus train--it was swimming in air and looked like Mr. Hanky with tail flippers. I think it was an assignment of some kind--alphabet circus thing that was going to hang on the wall
  
• walking to school with my neighbor Kim M. and her friends, and sometimes having to walk by myself because I was "too little" to walk with them
  
• having to act out, in movement, what my interpretation of some hopping sounds were that was being played over a speaker in the 'music' room--indoor gym class I guess. I remember it was just really weird . . .