First Day of School

My grandson Dan started school this week.  He will most certainly, unlike his grandpa, do his parents proud and excel  at all that important kindergarten stuff.  He's bright, funny, very personable and outgoing.  At 5 he will, just as the rest of us, start memory banking many of life's milestones like the day he was sentenced to school.  The fun is over!  From now on he will be expected to show up either at school or work for, unless he hits the lottery or gets a government job,  the next sixty years.  It's good that neither he or any of his contemporaries will be aware of this until it's too late, but, like spinach and brussel sprouts, it looms large.

Now it begins...60 years of responsibility.  Ugh!

Kindergarten for this correspondent was a considerable challenge.  I was the new kid, migrating to the neighborhood just prior to the start of school, and I was extremely shy.  Our house was only a couple of blocks from what was to be my elementary school so, of course, I walked.  On the very first day of class when the teacher let us out for recess I made the reasonable assumption that my presence was no longer required in the classroom and proceeded to head home.  I slipped from the playground through the teachers' parking lot, cut through a park. crossed U.S. highway 127 and made for my hacienda.  Mom was a little suspicious of my obviously short day but I assured her that we had been let out early because it was the first day.  The next day I followed the same brilliant plan but instead of going into the house after making my escape from the prison that was school I hid behind our garage where I had ingeniously stashed some toy cars and trucks that deserved my attention far more than the classroom did.

My teacher, being only slightly more mature than her young charges, remained blissfully ignorant of the fact she was consistently missing a student after each recess and I remained "at large" post monkey bars for over two weeks.  I might have pulled off my escape act forever if not for an unfortunate early recess.  One morning there was a problem with the thermostat or something in our kindergarten classroom and we kids were let out for recess a scant fifteen or twenty minutes into our day.  Naturally, since I couldn't tell time, I made my now routine getaway from the school.  I was a rebel who refused to live by their stupid rules!  Unfortunately, as I approached my garage hideaway,  dad was just leaving for work.  The jig was up.  

The interrogation tag team of mom and dad had me spilling my guts almost immediately and I was soon in the Principal's office with my parents as he and they discussed what was to become of me.  The next day I was in a new class with a new teacher who could actually count to thirty and had what seemed to be a special interest in where I was at any given moment.  I still hated school, an attitude that stayed with me until college, but wisely continued to employ my patented school survival regime of doing "just enough" to get by.  It also helped that I was lucky enough to find like minded pals to join me for a variety of trouble making schemes we practiced from the back row of nearly every class we were forced to endure.

I really do hope grandson Dan is better at school than I was.  It will be so much easier for him if he cooperates.  Also, sneaking home in San Diego is just a tad more complicated than taking a powder in Leslie, Michigan.  He'll need cab fare.  Hey, wait,  he's probably got an Uber app.

"Shape up Grandpa!"