First Day

Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

Heres one.

First day, first grade.

On my first day of first grade I fearlessly got out of the car and walked up to the doors alone. For whatever reason, I was arriving after the kids were already in classrooms and since my mother had been on the phone to this new school a number of times there was no reason to schelp my brother, herself and I all in.

I was quickly taken to my classroom. It was very different from my old one, which was at a very strict Catholic school run by very old nuns. My personality clashed there and after a full year of behavioral calls home, (this was kindergarten), my brother and I were going to try public school.

Kids were sitting on the floor when I arrived. Not in desks. Where were the rows of desks!? Well, there was one boy who seemed to be sitting in the biggest desk I’d ever seen. With bike wheels! His leg was in a giant white cast sticking straight out in front of him. I had never seen anything like this before. Plus there was that scary hospital smell that my brother came home with after his eye operations. We didn’t get pencils or paper. We just sat there on the ground looking up at everything. Which from my perspective made everything look huge and me feel very small.

I lasted a little while, but soon tears were running down my cheeks. I quickly completely melted down. We used this term with my first granddaughter. She became incredibly self aware at two and would announce that she was melting down only a few tears in. I, at four was light years away from this level of self awareness, and soon became inconsolable. They had to get another grownup to escort me to the office and then called my mom.

My mother, who was used to these school calls home, was angry. She’d hardly just dropped me off. What had I done already?!

They didn’t know.

After several questions, everyone concluded that I was freaked out over the kid in the cast and had to be switched into another classroom.

There, I got a desk in a row with a pencil and a paper and I happily made it through the rest of the day.

I wasn’t a kid who embraced newness. I was mostly freaked out by things not fitting what I had gotten used to. I spent all of kindergarten getting used to everything that made no sense to me at all. I thought school was a waste of my time. Not recess and lunch, or the occasional art project, but the sitting part. I got used to it, always made the most out of recess breaks, and walking home. I preferred the outdoors.

Inside had too many rules and way too much grown up energy.