I recall my first tour of the kindergarten room, being led to the child-sized kitchen where it was presumed I, as a girl, would play.
What? Certainly the only fun my mother ever had in the kitchen was talking on the phone. What else have you got?
Pretty soon I’d done the painting thing -- one blue line across the top for the sky, green along the bottom for grass, the spike-rimmed yellow circle above, the box house and stick people. It was time to branch out.
I went straight to where the action was: the huge pile of shoebox-sized cardboard blocks, printed to look like bricks, that never stopped being arranged and rearranged into forts or what-have-you.
Let me at ’em.
But they wouldn’t let me at ’em. The busy little block hoarders pointed out something I’d somehow missed: they were boys, and blocks, so they said, were only for boys.
So that's how you want to play it, eh, boys?
Confident in the support of the beloved new angel who’d been sent from heaven just to spend her days teaching me (oh yeah), I ran across the room. What was her name again? What did that matter? She was my glorious new personal discovery: Teacher. And that’s what I called out as I ran up behind her. “Teacher! Teacher!”
There was a pause, one I instantly learned to look out for. She turned her blond head furiously and bent her reddening face into mine. She actually shouted at me, her voice colder than any I’d yet heard: “My name is NOT ‘Teacher’! My name is Mrs. HAMMOND.”
Well then.
Didn’t she already know about the propensity of kindergartners to wet their pants? I’d seen that right from my first day. She was only lucky in my case.
Eventually, through my persistent wheedling -- still learning to say the right thing, or at least the right name -- the boys on the blocks were forced to accept me. But they were hostile behind the back of my former angel, and I soon gave up.
Where are those little testosterone-testing blockheads now?
Corporate America, presumably, or Hollywood.
What? Certainly the only fun my mother ever had in the kitchen was talking on the phone. What else have you got?
Pretty soon I’d done the painting thing -- one blue line across the top for the sky, green along the bottom for grass, the spike-rimmed yellow circle above, the box house and stick people. It was time to branch out.
I went straight to where the action was: the huge pile of shoebox-sized cardboard blocks, printed to look like bricks, that never stopped being arranged and rearranged into forts or what-have-you.
Let me at ’em.
But they wouldn’t let me at ’em. The busy little block hoarders pointed out something I’d somehow missed: they were boys, and blocks, so they said, were only for boys.
So that's how you want to play it, eh, boys?
Confident in the support of the beloved new angel who’d been sent from heaven just to spend her days teaching me (oh yeah), I ran across the room. What was her name again? What did that matter? She was my glorious new personal discovery: Teacher. And that’s what I called out as I ran up behind her. “Teacher! Teacher!”
There was a pause, one I instantly learned to look out for. She turned her blond head furiously and bent her reddening face into mine. She actually shouted at me, her voice colder than any I’d yet heard: “My name is NOT ‘Teacher’! My name is Mrs. HAMMOND.”
Well then.
Didn’t she already know about the propensity of kindergartners to wet their pants? I’d seen that right from my first day. She was only lucky in my case.
Eventually, through my persistent wheedling -- still learning to say the right thing, or at least the right name -- the boys on the blocks were forced to accept me. But they were hostile behind the back of my former angel, and I soon gave up.
Where are those little testosterone-testing blockheads now?
Corporate America, presumably, or Hollywood.
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