Day 66 - Dropping Out of Kindergarten

Kindergarten graduation image by SFA Union City via Flickr

 I was a kindergarten drop-out. I didn't know it at the time. It wasn't my choice. No one asked me if I wanted to stop going to kindergarten. It just happened. But I didn't notice at the time.
When I did learn that I only attended kindergarten for the first half of the year, I thought the reason was that Mom needed me at home to wash the kitchen floor. I have memories of being on my hands and knees with a sponge washing the floor from water in a pail. Mom was pregnant and couldn't get down to wash the floor that way any longer. I don't know why there wasn't a mop on a stick in the picture. I don't think I'm so old that they hadn't been invented yet. And I don't know why I thought attending kindergarten Mondays through Fridays was incompatible with making sure the kitchen floors were washed.

Recently, after watching our daughter-in-law go through her pregnancy, it struck me that my washing the kitchen floor was not all a consideration in my early departure from kindergarten. There were three other more significant considerations, and one right behind those three.

The first of those three is that the location of my kindergarten was across "the highway." I was four when I started kindergarten and I was not allowed to cross the highway, 4th Avenue South, by myself. The highway was the street that divided two-block long Dudrey Court so that those of us who lived on the north end didn't get to play the kids on the south end until the highway was rerouted several years later. Going to kindergarten therefore meant Mom had to walk with me until I had crossed 4th Avenue on the way to kindergarten, and then I had to wait for her to meet me at noon when I came home.

The second consideration is that winter requires a different style of dressing for that walk. The extra clothes and boots required added several minutes to getting ready for that walk.

The third consideration was I also had a younger brother who couldn't be left home alone. While I don't recall details of those walks, both Mom and Wayne must have walked me across 4th Avenue. And that meant winter required Mom to dress two of us plus herself for that walk in the morning and then once more with one child for the walk back at noon.

And the consideration that followed was the birth of my sister. The first three considerations alone probably would have ended my kindergarten career on their own, but the addition of the baby was the icing on the drop-out cake. Mornings were now the time for bathing the baby, feeding the baby, changing the baby's diapers, dressing the baby, and just spending time with the baby. Kindergarten was a poor second in the competition with the baby, even for me, even if I had known there was a choice.

Kindergarten was optional in those days, so attending only half a year of kindergarten was more than most children got. In addition, I had the oldest-child advantage:  I had more parent time before the age of 5 than any of my siblings. Mom had time to help me write letters to my cousin Lois. I told Mom what I wanted to say, she wrote it down for me, and then I copied what she wrote so that I could say that I wrote the letter even before I had learned to read. I didn't need to be able to read because Mom read stories to me and Dad told me stories, stories I thought he had read somewhere but later learned he just made up.

I didn't need to attend kindergarten for a full school year. I had Mom and Dad or five years before first grade started. I had Wayne to learn important socialization skills through playing together indoors. And I had all the rest of the kids on the north end of Dudrey Court to join me for "recess" aka playing outdoors.