I have a confession to make. When I was in Kindergarten I got in trouble for not following directions on the second or third day (in general it was highly probably that I would obey).
The teacher handed out a coloring page and a few crayons to each of us with the instructions that we shouldn't do anything until she said so--some freaky "Simon Says" shit or something. She would tell us which part of the picture to color when.
We colored a leaf. And then something else. And then the highly rational little devil that lives in my head said, "Fuck that bitch. You know how to color." And so I colored the sky blue...as did another little girl at my table who was copying me.
The teacher dashed over to our table and confiscated our pages and our crayons. I was so embarrassed. Here I was stuck in a class of kids who were still being taught to unzip their pants and I was being punished for not getting permission to color a damned sky. Tsk.
Anyhow, I don't know whether the excercise was about following directions or if it was about "this is what color this should be." Maybe a bit of both.
The point is I shouldn't have been in Kindergarten to start with. I was already reading on what was probably a second grade level by then, even if I couldn't recite those stupid-ass mnemonic devices they used to teach the alphabet. * I would have had to have started school in Virginia for them to have skipped me, but I don't think Grandma was going to drive me across the state line every morning to catch the bus.
I still can't color inside the lines to save my life. I call it needing a beer "being creative."
My masterpiece:
*I'm not that great at memorizing things. I have fantastic long-term memory, though. It's very hard for me to memorize a vocabulary list the night before a test, however two months later it'll all pop into my head as if it'd always been there. The same is true for the names of guys that I've dated and couldn't remember the names of.
I got in trouble in first grade for my messy handwriting. The teacher had a conference with my mom and said that my papers were "atrocious". The teacher turned to me, waving a couple of spelling tests and worksheets in my face and asked, "Why are you so messy with your handwriting, when you color so beautifully?" My reply, "The answers are all right, aren't they?" in the most sincere tone possible. She was completely speechless and my mom about burst a blood vessel trying not to laugh. If high fives were around in 1970 my mom would have given me one as we left the classroom. I really wasn't trying to be a smartass. I just didn't see what the fuss was about when I got 100's on every paper ever. My mom told me years later that was when she knew I was going to do alright no matter what, because I had "spunk". Thanks, Mom.
Posted by: Momotrips at April 15, 2005 12:35 AM