during the years of 1987-89, my family lived in southern california, in a little place called pasadena, where my dad was furthering his education. pasadena, of course, is well known for the rose bowl and parade, but it is also home to pasadena christian school. this is where i began my scholastic journey towards a well-rounded education.

before my parents could enroll me in the school, i had to complete a sort of entrance exam. i remember one part of this exam vividly. it had a box and a circle, probably six inches apart, and i was supposed to take a pencil and connect the box with the circle using a line. and because i was able to successfully accomplish this task, i was accepted at pasadena christian school.

my memories of kindergarten are fond ones. i lucked out and got assigned to the afternoon section of the class. this basically meant i could sleep in, watch sesame street, mr. rogers’ neighborhood and today’s special while eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. then my mom would take me to school. sometimes we’d walk there, but often we drove.

all of us kindergarteners were issued little mats of carpet that we were to sit on, and it didn’t take long to memorize where it was we were to sit. that was part of our education i suppose. i don’t remember anyone who sat around me except for the girl to my left who got chicken pox part-way through the year and missed a couple weeks of class. when she came back i noticed she smelled funny and since she still had some dots on her face, i kept my distance. throughout my childhood, i carried three terrible fears with me: getting drafted into the military and having to go through boot camp and fight a war, having to get braces or having to wear head gear, and getting chicken pox because i didn’t want to deal with the itching and the funny smells.

in kindergarten, at least at pasadena christian, they found all kinds of reasons for patting people on the back and making us feel good about ourselves. a favorite way to do this was to have a poster on the wall dedicated to something like losing teeth or learning how to tie one’s shoes. i never did lose a tooth until the summer after kindergarten, and i was the only one without a big tooth on the poster with my name on it. everyone else felt good about their mouths though i guess, so by and large, that poster was a success.

as far as the shoe-tying poster went, everyone got a chuck-taylor-all-star-esque shoe with their name on it. that is, everyone except me. i’ll have you know i learned to tie my shoes though, before most of my classmates, even. the only problem was that i tied mine differently than everyone else. instead of the “normal” way of tying one’s shoes, i formed two loops and tied them together. i then double-tied them for good measure. my shoes stayed tied just as well as everyone else’s, that’s for sure. but someone, somewhere, rest their soul, decided that we should all tie our shoes the same way, even though that way is not instrinsically any better than any other method.

during recess, we would run around outside like chickens with our heads cut off in the playground and we would climb all over the enormous metal rocket with the slide down the side. it really felt like we were exploring space. but because it was so spacey, i spent more of my time on the ground. at some point and for some reason i don’t recollect, i became a dog on a leash and some other guy became my owner and he would lead me around on an invisible leash. this would continue until our teacher would say to stop it. i’m sure at some point i had to have questioned why i was always the dog and why the other guy was always the person, but i don’t think the roles were ever reversed.

but then came the bookmark contest. we all set out to design and color the best bookmark ever, the kind that would make our parents proud. i drew a tree, with a trunk and branches and green bushy leaves, but also with a cross-section of the roots and their intricate weavings underground. i tied for first place with someone i remember being my friend, who drew a beach with seagulls over it. it was a very grey day at the beach, in his drawing, but the judges must have been feeling melancholy and so they liked it. i don’t know what anyone else did for their bookmark, except that the kid working next to me drew king kong climbing a building, reaching into windows and scaring residents.

so, in kindergarten, i learned how to draw a line from a box to a circle. i learned that people with chicken pox smell funny. i learned that people who lose their baby teeth in a timely fashion are better than those who hold onto them. i learned that there is a right and a wrong way to tie one’s shoes, just like there is a right and a wrong side of the road to drive on or like there is a right and a wrong way to talk to your parents or your teacher. i learned that some people are dog owners, other people are dogs, and still others are astronauts and space explorers. and i learned that scientifically accurate diagrams of trees and cloudy days at the beach will beat king kong any day.

oh, and i also learned that 2 + 2 = 4 and that dick and jane enjoyed seeing spot run.