(Editor’s Note: Who is “more elementary” on the first day of school, the first-time parent or the first-time student? Can still remember a certain day 60 years ago and another one like it 30 years ago. I am 0-for-2 … flunked the first day of first grade TWICE.)
Remember that kid who cried on the first day of first grade?
Remember how he clutched his father’s clothing, how he begged for mercy, how he screamed bloody murder and pleaded he would do ANYTHING if he could just go home?
Remember? Any thought of saving himself embarrassment was long gone now because this was IT and he didn’t care.
Forget pride. Forget being cool. Forget any hopes of the class presidency.
Remember that kid?
That kid was me.
Loser. Wimp. Doofus.
I was That Kid Who Cried. The only one. My classmates forgave me the noise I made and the angst I caused, but they never forgot. Many school grades later, long after we’d memorized the helping verbs and learned the presidents, one of them would whisper as we were standing in line at the pencil sharpener, “Hey, ’member that first day of school when you cried and all?”
Branded.
I had dropped out of kindergarten the previous October — workload just too demanding — so I didn’t know anybody that September day when they made us gather in the elementary school cafeteria. Some kids were alone, some were with parents, and strangely, they all seemed relatively happy.
Not me. I sat with my dad, close, praying with fear and trembling. There was more water on my face than there was Vitalis on his head, which was substantial.
A man in front of everybody read lists of names, and rows of children lined up behind teachers, sheep being led to the slaughter. I think the breaking point for me was when I heard my name. I had tried hard not to cry, but at that point, I just don’t think I could help it. It got so bad, I think the principal, Mr. Rozier, considered calling in the National Guard.
I was physically led to Mrs. Bobbie Cook’s classroom where my dad promised he’d come back in a couple of hours to check on me. Here, I was left for dead.
Boyd Flowers looked at me and I know what he was thinking: “I hope I don’t have to sit by that kid.” David Collins looked at me; I could read his mind: “You’re a loser.”
It was bad.
Mrs. Bobbie saved me. She gave us these mimeographed pictures to color, a picture of a little mimeographed boy and a little mimeographed girls walking to a little mimeographed schoolhouse by a mimeographed tree.
I started coloring and things were OK. I don’t know what it was. Mrs. Bobbie, maybe. The colors. Addiction to the smell of the mimeograph. The threat of a beating at the first-grade hands of Boyd Flowers and David Collins.
Whatever. I can see my dad’s head sticking in the doorway at mid-morning, the Vitalis and straight part of his black hair still pitching a shutout. And I can feel me waving him off, telling him it was OK.
Now I know that long-ago day was probably harder on my dad than it was on me, (for the hair products if for no other reason).
I wonder if he cried too. He was only 27, much younger than I was Monday when, 30 years after my first day of school, I took my son to his first day.
One of us didn’t come close to crying. One of us did.
Loser. Wimp. Doofus.
But then, I do that once every 30 years, just like clockwork. Should be used to it by now.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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