Soon, children will be getting ready for their first day of school. I was one of those kids who didn’t want to go. I had more important things to do like ride around on my tricyle!
When I was a kid, I hated school. I just didn’t want to be there; I wanted to be at home with my mom. It seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to be sent off every morning in rain, snow, sleet or heat. I went to a Catholic school just down the street from where I lived. It was a pleasant enough place, I suppose. The church was right across the street and back then it was a big part of our education.
In 1963 I was in kindergarten. At the time, it was run out of the church basement, and really wasn’t much of a learning centre. It was a small room with some toys, books and a few puzzles. But I felt a more urgent need to be outside. I’d often ride my tricycle, a honking big green trike, to kindergarten. I’d then spend most of my time on it, outside on those beautiful days riding around the church parking lot. That is until the teacher, who was an elderly woman, would come out and tell me to put my bike away and come and learn some letters. I didn’t enjoy being told to put my bike away. In fact, feeling part of the whole school experience was few and far between for me. School, from my perspective, was a place where freedom didn’t exist. And it was hard to listen to this woman who, it seemed to me, should have been at home knitting baby sweaters for her grown children. I’m sure I didn’t think that back then, but I think that now. And perhaps she wasn’t as old as I remember. She may have been my age now for all I know, but at the time she seemed really, really old.
One thing I do remember about those kindergarten days was the day President Kennedy was shot. I remember being there playing, then all of a sudden there seemed to be this huge commotion going on, with adults running in and out of the room. Someone, I recall, found a television and proceeded to turn it on. I remember my teacher crying. Then all of a sudden my mother showed up, which was really odd because my mother would never take me home unless there was some sort of emergency. She did try to tell me what was happening but all I remember is the sadness of the adults, and the tears. Also, it seemed to me they were fearful. That day, like others that would follow, would ultimately become embedded in my mind. The feeling of loss and sadness still resonates with me today.
One cold, blustery winter morning, when I was a year older and in grade one, I spent several hours playing on a snow hill just down the street from my house. It must have been just after one of those great big snow storms, as I was having a wonderful time making angels in the snow. The street was so quiet, the sounds muffled by all the snow that had just fallen. The sky was a perfect blue and the sun was shining. I was quite happy playing out in that snow bank. Unfortunately the woman who lived across the street from that snow bank felt differently.
I remember her coming up to me. “Hello, are you Martha?”
“Yes,” I responded.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school, Martha?”
“I think so.” Now I was feeling like I was being interrogated.
“Ok, well why don’t I take you home?”
“Okay,” I said, not thinking it was going to turn out so wrong once we got to our front door.
“Hello, Joan,” the woman said to my mother at the door. “I found something that I think belongs to you. She was playing outside our house. She’d been there for quite some time and was sure she must be bitterly cold so I thought I’d bring her home to you.”
“Well, thank you,” my mom replied.
Once the woman left, my mom’s demeanor completely changed. “Martha, what were you thinking? Why aren’t you in school? You have to go to school!” she yelled. She yelled a bit more, then grabbed her coat and hauled me off by the scruff of the neck all the way to school. That was one of the most embarrassing events of my life. It was awful arriving to class, when all the other kids were seated properly at their desks, being dragged into the room by my mother. Me crying, her crying; it was not a pleasant scene. And then after my mother left I got yelled at some more by the nun who was my teacher. I tuned out most of her yelling and looked out the window at the beautiful day I was missing.
From then on, school was just not the place I wanted to be. And even though I never went to university, I did, at the tender age of forty-nine, receive my diploma from Vanier, Quebec’s CEGEP (General and Vocational College) in Early Childhood Education.
Ironic the way life works, isn’t it?
Photo Credit
Photo courtesy of Martha Farley – all rights reserved
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