The Kindergarten Christmas Miracle

The memory of a great miracle on the last day of Kindergarten before Christmas break.

The Kindergarten Christmas Miracle

A long time ago, back when we were a great country, I was in kindergarten at Wood Roads Elementary School in Ballston Spa NY. It was 1988, about to change over to 1989. I was five years old. This was before my one-year stint as a cub scout in the Tiger Cubs and before I aced the first grade ... twice.

We were coming up to the holiday break, I believe it would be the Christmas one since my recollections include Christmas songs as part of the production we elementary students were supposed to put on for all our assembled parentage just before we departed for the break. Besides 1^st grade, kindergarten was by far my best academic year ever. I was, and still am, a natural kindergartner. Every morning Ms., J, who also doubled as our gym teacher from time to time, would drive my bus from the Country Manor Trailer Park where I lived for a few of my formative years in the up-state New York countryside through the city of Ballston Spa to the other side (from north to south) where all three schools, elementary, middle, and high, and the bus lots and playgrounds were.

There was a pretty decent playground at the back of the school compound built in the late 60's out of heavy metals coated in a thick layer of dull but luxurious and highly toxic lead paint. The slide stuck to your butt when it was hot and it was way too high up to be safe for any of us little kids, but, ... we went anyway. The swings, merry-go-round (when not stuck) and the "jungle jim" were certain death, and as the swings were too high off the ground for us little kids were seldom used anyway. The lunchroom of the school was part of the gym for the big kids that was sectioned off with large hall dividers. So were the kindergarten "classrooms" as they weren't in regular classrooms, but were down a hall that also had dividers and partitions to make as many or as few kindergarten areas as they might need. This meant the hallway was heavily trafficked throughout the day behind you while you were in class. It led out to where we got on our bus, mine being Ms. J's #802, the number that was on the side of the bus and subsequently also matched the laminated construction paper bus necklace with a yarn chain that all of us kindergarteners wore so we could identify our bus in the bus lot. You would hold up your little laminated paper bus and match the numbers on it to the ones painted on the side of the bus. If they matched, then you would climb aboard and magically be transported home every time.

One cold December morning I took bus #802 as I usually did to Wood Roads. I knew I wouldn't have to worry about the ride home because my mother was going to actually pick me up after all the Christmas singing we would do for her at the end of the day before Christmas Break. I wasn't sure what "Christmas Break" was, but I knew it had Christmas inside it so it couldn't be bad.

The bus arrived as it was supposed to, finely covered in hundreds of little swastikas we little kids drew in the condensation that covered the windows in winter. None of us had any clue what a swastika was or meant, but we had seen it on Indiana Jones movies on television as the symbol for the bad guys, who, we all agreed, had pretty cool outfits compared to him. I'm sure Ms. J loved that we all daily decorated her bus with little condensation swastikas all winter for the few years we rode with her.

You must also understand that by kindergarten, I was already a married man. I was probably "married" about 100+ times at least as I entered kindergarten class to ended up being "married" every morning to one of several other kindergarten girls each day. This occurred as soon as you entered the kindergarten "room" where, as a boy, you were required to report to the wooden play kitchen and kitchen table that all the girls commanded the duration of kindergarten. You sat at the low wooden table with all the other boys, and one of the girls would immediately "marry" you .. by command .. and cook you a wooden egg in a little wooden frypan. You then had to sit in the little wooden chair at the wide but very low wooden table with all the other "married men" and pretend eat the little wooden egg and listen to all of their chatter as they all preened and discussed how amazing or lousy we all were as husbands. If you were smart, you made a break for it and escaped the wooden play kitchen and got a divorce for the rest of the day.

Every little kid had their little wooden desk with thin metal legs and pencil box space that was usually kept a mess. I made sure mine was neat, because I was OCD, and the messy kids weirded me out. The day started with a calendar lesson where you were taught every single day how to use a calendar and what day it was and what the month and year was and about all the holidays. This was followed by a lesson on dollars and cents. I think nowadays we skip the sense part. No one uses cents anymore because of inflation. No one uses any sense anymore either.

After these lessons in precursor mathematics, you worked in your workbook. There were three kinds of "workbook." There was red workbook for "dumb" kids, green workbook for "not too dumb" kids and blue workbook for the "smart" kids.

The "smart" kids usually always worked with the teacher. They usually worked on phonetics and sounded out letters and sounds they made to prepare them for eventual reading. If you were one of the other workbook categories you might occasionally hear something like,

"Christopher!! Get back to your red book."

Or "Well, that's ... sort of what a W should look like, keep trying there Suzy."

I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed all my redbook lessons. Handwriting practice pages made up the bulk of the red workbook. There were also numbers to practice how to write or print. Near the end of the workbook, in order to move up to green, was cursive practice. The book would have you practice repetitively how to print your T's, R's, W's, V's, 6's and 8's within those solid horizontal lines with the dash lines in between them midway. I made sure all of my letters finished very smoothly and crisply with a nice finishing stroke of the pencil. I must have done about a thousand of these when at some point a flurry of activity broke the haze of printing perfection and caused you to be aware that it was now time for lunch.

We fell into line and marched down the hall and into the interior maze of the labyrinth that was Wood Roads. Deep in the heart of the school was the lunchroom. Wood Roads had a reputation for the best school lunch pizza and 25 cent cookies around. Occasionally, while waiting for the bus in the front seat of our family car I would filch a quarter from my Mom for a cookie. It was very rare that I did this though, because I knew it was bad, but I also sort of knew she wouldn't really care. There was always a pile of "cents" in the cupholders of the car that no one seemed to worry about. On this particular day of my memory, I think she had just gone ahead and given me the quarter. Lunch was a dollar and a quarter, and your cookie quarter was extra, making the total that day $1.50. That got me my milk, pizza, puddle o' corn drowned in bun oil, and my quarter cookie.

The main goal during lunch for many kids was to get in as much trouble as you could .. and not get caught. I found this unfulfilling to engage in myself because it meant less time to eat and subsequently less food. There was no "snack time" that I recall in our kindergarten, because this was back when we were a great country. There was also no "water bottle" to carry around so there was no 24-7 access to water all the time like school kids enjoy today. The kindergarten hall had its own bathroom so we little kids didn't really have to worry about that unless you had to go during lunch. The solution was simple: just make darn sure you NEVER had to go during lunch, library, recess, or gym.

Getting in trouble also meant that you would be sent to .. The Wall .. if you got caught. The Wall was where all criminals who got caught by the lunch monitor ladies were sent to stand at attention for the duration until the teacher came to pick up the class. You stood either facing the lunchroom against The Wall, to face the jeers and taunts of your peers, or you stood with your nose to The Wall. This all depended upon how bad the lunchroom monitor ladies had determined you were. Some kids loved getting sent to the Wall, since it was attention that they otherwise seemingly didn't get. Most of us kids hated it, especially with our noses to the Wall. It was especially awkward for you when the teacher returned from her lunch and looked to her left to see who was at The Wall and if any of the miscreants sent there that lunch period were one of hers.

Wall-less classes were awarded three sticks, popsicle sticks, used to incentivize good behavior for classes in the halls, library, lunchroom, gym, and outside. If your class earned a million sticks, then your class won a trip to the "treasure chest." I was only ever at the "treasure chest" twice that I can recall in my three years at Wood Roads. I cannot recall being impressed with the "treasure chest"...

After lunch was "Physical Education." We would go to our little kid gym which was half of a full gym created by dividers to give the lower grades easier access to their own gym space. The gym had two lines that ran from the one full end of the gym near the door. One line near the door and one far, both ran down the floor parallel to each other into the divider wall. These outlined what was normally a basket ball court. Ms. J would quickly put her cigarette out when we entered the gym for "Physical Education" and then cough at us to form lines on either line at either side of the gym floor. There was a big beat-up cardboard box as tall as her full almost to overflowing with small fuzzy grey balls, that almost looked like .. snowballs. One corner of the gym near the divider had a table which sat at the end of the line I was lined up on with my fellow comrades-in-arms.

At the blow of the whistle, we troops on either side of the battlefield would scramble over the slippery gym floor in our socks and run as fast as our flabby little kid legs could carry us to the box and scoop as much ammunition out of the box as we could to dash back to our respective firing zones ahead of the lines. The air of the gym would roar with the sound of battle as fuzzy fake snowballs whizzed through the air and wounded, killed, or maimed troops on both sides. I do not recall the rule of this "game" other than if hit and called "out!" you had to sit on the line until Ms. J resurrected you back to battle. We stupidly played this pointless game with no points, no rules, and no discernable way to win or lose for the duration of the time with no critical thinking about what we were doing or why.

For, "ours was not to reason why, ours was but to do or die.."

Ugh! I was hit! I flopped to the line near Ms. J to serve my time of "out." As I sat and beheld the pure ferocity of the battle before me ... I realized I really was dying ... my pizza lunch and quarter cookie were fighting back! Oh NO! My stomach heaved and churned with the contents of an aggravated lunch. I flopped over onto the floor on my side, hoping Ms. J would be super slow to resurrect me, as I would be useless to my comrades in such a state. Beads of sweat broke out all over me as wave after wave of nausea and pain racked my very form.

I realized at that point; I was going to throw up.

There was no stopping it. It was going to happen no matter what. I could feel it churning up my throat and desperately my bugged-out eyes searched for where ... ah ... ah aha! The table! I immediately flopped over in a prone position on my side to lessen my agony, lessen my visibility to Ms. J and the enemy forces across from me and to inch my way across the floor to the dark recesses of safety under the table in the corner of the gym.

Slowly, I used my arm to flop myself across the floor ... slowly ... slowly ... like a slug ... down the line toward the safe comforting darkness under the table. I checked from time to time to see if Ms. J noticed. Her stern gaze blinked upon the progress of the battle .. and her wristwatch: yes .. back and forth from the battlefield to the watch and back, the watch ticked away the minutes to her next cigarette. I was nothing to her. The line of other wounded and "out" were also nothing to her. Carefully I slid noiselessly along my side and made it under the table, turned my neck so my mouth faced the floor, and deposited all of my offending lunch into a big liquified pink pool under that blessed table. I then flipped over to my other side and repeated how I had arrived under the table back to my place in the troop replacement line. Ms. J never looked or said a thing! Relief flushed my face and victory was achieved!

We collected our sticks after battle and marched back to our room. We were drilled about singing our songs and then quick marched along with every other grade in the elementary side of the school to an auditorium that I had never been to before and to my recollection would never see again. Various parents were gathered to hear their progeny sing our miserable Christmas .. what? Ah yes, well, this was back when we were a great country and Christmas was still acknowledged by schools and municipal authorities. There was no such thing as "Winter Break" or "Spring Break" back then. After belting out our songs, we marched back to our rooms to get our backpacks and to let those kids taking buses go to buses. This would not include me that particular day.

At this point, I had become panicked. My singing was great. But I was concerned that my "crime" would not only be discovered before I had left the building, but I would be linked to the pool of rapidly congealing pink goo that to my knowledge was still sitting and growing cold on the gym floor under Ms. Jean's table. This possibility of getting caught seemed high since in order to return to the room to get backpacks to go home, one had to pass .. the gym.

The line stops. No! The water fountain! We gulp our water ration one by one to a 1,2,3 count. Seconds tick by and turn into minutes. My anxiousness builds. "Let me out of here!" I keep thinking. I gulp my ration and move to the watered line ahead. The last of us goes, that's it! We are moving again. We start approaching the door to the gym which will appear to our left. I look as I pass the open door and ... under the table! ... It's GONE! ... A Christmas miracle has happened! I'm not caught! HA HA!! I escape!