You don’t have to be very old for a boy to realize he’s walking into an embarrassing situation. Even though we lived across the street from the Catholic grade school, they didn’t have Kindergarten. OK, so maybe another church or school. I could live with that. But no, about 1 mile to the west was an all-girls Catholic High School.
Mrs. Miller was the only mom in our neighborhood who could drive. Remember this was 1956. So, every morning, she would load up four boys and one girl and take us to school in her 1956 Pontiac red station wagon with the fake woody look on the door sides. We all fought for the third-row seat. It faced backward. It had the neatest little pass-through to the back seat. Kind of a little walkway. I don’t remember being picked up from my half-day of school until the very last day of school for the term.
My first girlfriend, at least I thought so, was Mary. Ironically, she became the principal of that school in later life. I took a rug to school to nap on. The nuns were smart. Take us through a few activities, maybe dance in a circle, learn how to spell our names, and know our addresses. Listen to a few stories being read to us then lay down for a nap. How do you get a bunch of five-year-olds to nap in the morning? Anyway, you promise them graham crackers and milk. It’s my comfort food combination to this day!
Last day of school, we had a picnic. We brought our picnic lunch that day. I brought cold, fried chicken, a slice of white bread with butter, and a dill pickle that leaked, always leaked through the wax paper it was wrapped in.
Walking out to the area I had never been to before on the grounds of the high school, carrying my little paper lunch bag, my nun teacher walked up and asked how I was feeling. “OK, Sister.” She placed her chalky, white hands on either side of my cheeks.
” You can’t go to the picnic, Gary. You have the Mumps.”
“What’s that?” So, my collar feels a little tight, with a button-up, plaid flannel shirt. What’s new? I can go, besides I have chicken to eat. A delicacy for a kindergartener. My head did feel like a pumpkin. I heard the kids playing at a distance. I stood alone being rejected for that last day of the Kindergarten picnic. My lunch bag with the pickle continued to threaten breakage through my paper brown bag. The sister ushered me back to the entrance to the school and Mrs. Miller, red Pontiac Mrs. Miller, was there to pick me up. Bless her heart.
That was one sad ride home alone in the back seat with the slight smell of dill pickle. It never soaked through to my corduroy pants though. Great pants! A sad day to never be repeated, at least in that format.
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