A few days ago we looked at a vignette from the first grade experience. Today is the tale of the coloring book. Not just any coloring book, but The Coloring Book. It was a huge, fat, glorious set of pages just begging to be crayoned. He had received the book on his sixth birthday, and he had still many, many wonderful pages to be artistically completed. (Yeah, I know. Stifled his creativity before it had a chance to grow. And other baloney.)
Anyway, it was a beautiful late summer day and school had been in session perhaps two weeks when The Boy decided to take the wonderful treasure to school. Now, those arriving at school before Teacher came out to gather the children around the flagpole to say the Pledge of Allegiance had to remain on the sidewalk or on the grassy area outside the schoolground itself.
The school was a "primary school" and housed first and second grade only. There was no public kindergarten in those times and in that place. Good heavens, how ever did the kids get an education?
So anyway, the second graders were "kings of the hill," so to speak and the firsters trembled in their very presence. At least some of them did, and the Boy was such an one. You know what happened. The "big kids" started to tease the child with his treasure. "Oh, look, the Baby brought his coworring book," and so on. So the child, crushed and intimidated, threw the book into the grass and PROCEEDED TO SIT ON IT! Dorks do have a way about them, and this elicited even more teasing in the vein of "BWAK, Bwak, buk, buk, buk-- look, the Chicken is trying to hatch his book."
Did I mention that school was not high on the list of the boy's pleasures?
6 comments:
Oh my, this tale does bring back some of my own memories of school days where I would get teased about my homemade clothes, the hand-me-downs from my sister, my crooked teeth (which since have grown in just fine), etc. Kids can be so cruel, and can mold our personalites for life!
As for the post about the beach bodies! Oh my gosh, I smiled so big at that one. I wish you could come on over here to europe and see what is on the beaches, many of them go topless, or ladies wear bikinis when they really should be covering up as much as possible! It can be a bit hard on the eyes to go to the beach here. I have learned to just look straight ahead and not dwell too much on what others look like, other wise I might never want to go to the ocean again. :-) hugs, Debby
Yes, Debby, kids can be cruel. Perhaps it is all part of the toughening process so we can deal with "real life."
Your first paragraph reminded me of the Dolly Parton song, "Coat of Many Colors." We do learn early on that not everyone sees the world the same way!
and, oh,yes. I've seen some beach sights here that require quick averting of the eyes. Aaaaargh!
Kids be so cute and oh so cruel.
Chuck, because they have such big eyes and are brutally honest?
Wow- guess I haven't stopped by for a while. But I'm glad I came for this post. I sure remember all those painful moments.
Sharkbytes, the two "painful" stories I shared on the blog represent the sum total of my recollection of first grade.
Maybe I can "go through school" a grade at a time. We'll see.
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