Tag: kindergarten

Things I didn’t have at home.

Since this blog is mostly about the things I’ve experience in my life, some of which happened in childhood, I think this belongs here. It marks one of the first times I discovered that I was surrounded by people I didn’t quite understand. Sometimes I truly felt like a stranger in a strange land.

The first time I met him was on the playground when I was very young, probably in kindergarten or first grade. He was a couple years older than me and considerably bigger. He had a football he had brought to school. When he saw me, he said, go out for a pass. I ran out and he threw the ball to me. I caught it and threw it back. The passing went on for a while, then recess was over and we went back inside. It was a fun time.

Back then, my grandmother took exceptional care of me. She drove me to school everyday and picked me up when it was over. She also usually came to get me at lunch to take me home to eat the meal she had prepared, which was always better than what they had at the school cafeteria.

My grandmother lived very close to one of her brothers, and also one of her sisters, so I had cousins living nearby. I was pretty accustom to one of them. He would come by pretty often to play. He was also older than me, and even older than the kid throwing the football, so I sometimes asked him about things that older people do. I guess he was sort of like an early mentor.

My cousin was also fond of riding home with my grandmother and I for lunch because he didn’t want to walk. He caught a ride home with us on the day I was passing the football around. I remember I was very happy about getting to play football with someone at school, so I mentioned it to my cousin on the way home.

I told my cousin, I made a new friend today at school and we played football at recess. He looked over at me, rolled his eyes like I was an idiot, and said, who was it? I told him his name, and then my cousin said, you better not let him hear you say that. I said, say what? He said, that he is your friend. If he hears you say that, he will beat you up.

I gave him a puzzled look. All the way home I thought about what he said. I can’t admit I am friends with someone because they will beat me up? It totally confused me. The world I lived in before grade school seemed more logical to me and a lot more kinder. Why would you beat someone up who called you friend? Was it because he was older? Was there a class difference? Was calling a guy a friend a sissy thing to do? I mean, I knew that being a sissy would get you beat up.

I never asked my cousin for specifics, but I generally found his advice to be sound, even when it didn’t make sense. I never told this guy I was his friend. I also kind of avoided him after that, maybe out of fear, but maybe just because no one wants to be around someone who doesn’t like them. You kind of want to play the odds in your favor to avoid trouble.

I also noticed in later years that this kid became something of a bully. He would often hit other kids and just be mean in general. The worst story I heard about him was he had a girlfriend in high school and he used to hit her. The story was she jumped out of his moving car and ran away just because she was afraid of him. She broke it off with him after that. Looking back, I’m kind of glad my cousin warned me about him, but I still didn’t really understand why he was mean.

When this kid finally graduated, his mom and dad divorced, and his mom moved away to another town. It so happened that my mom and dad relied on her to help with their tax filings, so they visited her once year. His mom told my mom why she left town. She said, she was just staying around for the kids to grow up, but she was getting really tired of covering up all the bruises.

It would appear that when a kid sees violence at home, they sometimes reenact it at school. That was what was missing. There was zero violence at my house and my family members were not mean to each other.

Do you think early home life dramatically changes your perception of the world? Was there any behavior you witnessed that you didn’t understand? Do you think bullying is still a problem in our schools? Did you have an older mentor growing up? What do you remember about your grandparents? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!

What I enjoy most about writing.

I still have memories of when I was very young. I remember my mom reading books to me before I was even in kindergarten. My grandmother would also read to me. A couple of my cousins who were older than me would even read to me. If I strongly remember something from that far back, it is likely because it had a very profound effect on my developing brain.

I have always found written words to be very interesting. I somehow knew those strange symbols on the pages of a book translated into words, and then the words became sentences, and then the sentences morphed into an entertaining story. This was like some sort of magic to me! I simply couldn’t wait until I learned to read and write for myself.

I remember one time my older cousin and her friend came over to visit. My cousin’s name was Missy, and her friend was named Dana. They were sort of babysitting me I guess, because I was several years younger than they were. Since they were older, they already knew how to read and write a little. I can remember them writing words on a piece of paper. I didn’t understand what the symbols meant, but I was fairly artistic, so I picked up a pencil and started copying the letters I saw on their paper. Dana was very surprised by this and said, oh wow, does he already know how to write? Missy said, no, he’s just drawing. This was true of course, but it shows how much letters and words enchanted me.

Books were also very interesting to me. As well as being artistic, I was also a very crafty person when I was young. I would make all kinds of things out of wood, cardboard, paper, etc. I remember one time I decided to make a book. It did a pretty good job of it as I remember. The cover was constructed of cardboard with duct cloth glued all around it. Basically, it looked like a canvas covered tome with quite a few blank pages inside it.

By the time I made this book, I already had some reading and writing education from school, but I didn’t quite use what I learned. I always had an affinity for symbols, so I created my own alphabet. The goal was to write a book that no one but me could read. If you found it, you would need my alphabet to read it. The book was basically a bestiary. It had lots of drawings of animals and mythical creatures that I hand drew, and I would write up a description of them using my secret alphabet. I think it would be a real treat to find this book now, but it was lost to the ages unfortunately.

This book project was one of many word-related things I did growing up. I spent a lot of time just contemplating the alphabet and language. I later created other alphabets and really started to think about the letters. I also started to gain some familiarity with the Greek alphabet and the Latin language. I was fascinated how Latin grammar was so different from English grammar. I sort of liked how Latin worked. It seemed purer and simpler me, compared to my mother tongue. I thought about the idea of creating the perfect alphabet and language. I made some progress on this, but eventually abandoned it to do other things.

Being a very curious kid, I also liked to read non-fiction. I remember one time I went with my grandmother to visit her sister. I saw that her sister had a shelf containing a set of World Book Encyclopedias. I remember sitting down on the floor and reading one. Encyclopedias really fascinated me! The idea of having the breadth of human knowledge right at my fingertips totally thrilled me! I had a voracious appetite for knowledge! When my grandmother got ready to leave, I wanted to stay. I didn’t want to leave the books behind. Then my grandmother said, do you want to take those home? They actually belong to your mom. I was so excited! I spent countless hours with them! I would jump from article to article learning everything that mankind had done.

This leads me back to the topic of writing. I love writing because I love reading. I am indebted to all those countless authors and writers who left behind their work for me to read. I feel like sooner or later, it’s your turn to add to the shelves of human knowledge and literature, so here I am, spilling my life out onto a page using secret magical symbols. Hope you enjoy! Happy decoding!

Possible discussion ideas.

  1. Do you have fond memories of reading and writing?
  2. Do you still remember encyclopedia sets?
  3. Do you like arts and crafts and making things?
  4. Ever experimented with alphabets and language?
  5. Did you have people read to you a lot?
  6. Do you like to read non-fiction also?

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments, and don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe!