My earliest school experiences were either preschool, kindergarten, or very early grades.  I don’t remember which or much about them, but as I’m trying to put together some childhood memories before they disappear, it’s school time.  The school that had me feeling the youngest was an overtly christian one in a rustic looking piece of suburb.  The driveway and parking lot were gravel and dust, and there were largish deciduous trees all around.  Probably this was preschool?

I remember making gingerbread houses for xmas.  I’m not sure if we used legit ginger pieces or the cheapo version, with graham crackers, but the icing was good enough.  We built them around trimmed down milk cartons, as a mold.  Seems like an advanced craft for somebody who had only been walking for a few years.  Of course, there were hand turkeys and all the usual shit.

There was a playground with some pretty good-sized equipment.  I remember the centerpiece of it was almost like a house.  I could stand up to my full height under the platform.  I wasn’t a total misfit, but I was very outnumbered by girls.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I played Bosley to some Charlie’s Angels at some point, of which my sister was one.  Hey, she was a biracial angel years before Ella Balinska was born.

Again, I feel like I had a girl or two who were fascinating me and I didn’t understand why yet.  Not precisely, but I was kinda precocious in this regard.  One of the girls looked kinda like me with light eyes and buck teeth, but had short black hair*, and another one had long brown hair.  Maybe I was more interested in the brown-haired girl but got along with the black-haired one better?  I have a dim memory that I might have gotten as far as baby-styled “going steady” if I’d stayed there much longer.  We never did stay in one school for long, as it happened.

We’d play tag with these rules.  The person who was “it” knocked on the playground house and the people inside say, “who’s there?” It says “Big Bad Wolf.” We say “What do you want?” It says “Colored eggs.” We say “What color?” and It has to guess. When they guess the color you were thinking, you had to run out of the shelter and get chased?  My recollection breaks down here.

We had a cat at some point and lost it.  I forget the cat’s name but think it was orange tabby.  This bothered me enough that when a teacher told us about prayer, that was the first thing I prayed for.  No dice.  Further, while I could conjure a vague white glow when I closed my eyes and did the rigamarole, I realized that I was just imagining it, and that stopped it cold.  When you tell a kid about prayer for the first time, there’s probably more clever ways to do it, ways less likely to result in atheism.  They blew it and I was an atheist for life already.  Not long after that, I remember realizing I didn’t even remember the missing cat – not really – and was disturbed by the fact.  Growing brains do weird things.

There was a school play where I had to perform as a shepherd, with a crappy sheep hook made out of paper towel rolls and constantly falling to pieces.  On the night of the play I don’t know if I even got in two words before I turned bright pink and laughed until they removed me from the stage.  Earliest memory of this tendency I have, but it’s still a thing.  Usually happens in situations where I should be afraid, and am on a subconscious level.  Like the ghoulish humor I fell into when my husband had his gall bladder removed and was all messed up.

There was another school-esque situation we were in for a minute, in a more urban location.  Where that one had been gravel and grass, this one was beauty bark and concrete.  More shadows from neighboring buildings.  I didn’t get along with anyone but don’t remember fighting.  Just remember an enforced nap time that I was usually awake through.  And breaking a finger for the first time.  I’d gone off alone and was finding the cool metal of the front gate appealing.  I ran my little hand inside a groove there, and when it opened automatically for a car, snappo.  Not a serious break, but enough that the staff should’ve done something about it sooner than they did.

Lastly, I remember another school which tried to teach us American Sign Language.  This was more like a regular school so probably first grade.  I was ahead on English skills so it felt like baby school.  I fancied myself an artist but I was the only one in class that fucked up our papier-mâché Easter eggs, by not putting enough mâché on that shit.  I probably cried.  I recall starting to hate school about then.  I remember this school was racially diverse and had those big tires on the playground you could hide in, maybe monkey bars? but little else.

These were the only schoolish experiences I’m pretty sure happened when we were living in that housing project.  I remember nothing of the teachers except that they were women.

–

*Wow, it’s really weird with these memories of memories, how removed they are, trying to feel your way back to something like this.  Maybe her name was Iris**?  And for the life of me I can only picture her as looking like one of my own childhood pictures with darker hair and more colorful clothing.  Eh, small enough kids all look the same, so probably not all that inaccurate.

**There are mandolins in that song?  I didn’t remember that.  Why didn’t I remember that?

Still writing about the earliest epoch of my childhood, in mid-California suburbs. Now, I don’t remember having seen Karate Kid back then, but I must have, because one year I wanted to be a The karate kid for halloween.  Ralph Macchio was a barefoot king, and by gum I would be barefoot as well… but no, mom kibosh’d that shit.  I felt like the costume was ruined.  Probably my tender feets were grateful tho, especially as this was before plastic bottles were more prevalent, and there was broken glass fuckin’ everywhere.

This post is about excursions, trips, jaunts even.  Things that didn’t happen at home.  Some of this was in the homes of family members I didn’t really know.  I think my aunt Margaret was one, my aunt Pat was another.  I remember little about them from that time, but Pat’s condo had exercise equipment and a refrigerator full of one of the early diet pops – Tab.  I wonder if it contributed to her colon cancer later on, or if that was just the same mutation that was likely to blame for mine.  Only known LGBTetc person from that generation of my ancestors, a Frisco dyke as they say.  I did see her again as an old lady, slept in that same condo one night as a bald-headed starving artist.  Exchanged some awkward emails with her when needing a favor; did not pan out.  She was a privately cold and publicly difficult person to get along with for more than brief times.  My brother got along with her better, while living in the Bay Area for college.

Back to the kid years.  At some point we were at a family member’s house with a swimming pool in the backyard.  My brother almost got himself drowned, not sure how.  My dad remembers the incident as him arriving to see that our mom, who was supposed to be watching us, had her nose buried in a book and missed it – that  he had to dive in and save the boy.  I don’t even remember him being there.  In my mind it could have been our mom that saved him, but I’d trust his memory of this better since he wasn’t six years old.

I recall seeing the drawings by a cousin, a teenage boy who drew nothing but cars.  I was plenty impressed.  There’s a picture from around that time of me sitting on the couch with a teenage boy and I feel like there was some implication from someone somewhere at sometime that the kid was up to no good.  No idea who this was or how true that was.  Pretty sure it wasn’t my Bay Area hipster cousin Dave, who looks like Dave Gahan, tho I think he does work on cars.

There was a lot of dry grass in the world, yellow and scratchy.  In my grandparents’ driveway I got stung by tripping and landing with my hand on a dead bee.  Same driveway where I lost a fingernail in a car door.  I just remembered my grandmother had a red volkswagen bug.

We went to a family reunion with a bunch of people I never knew and will never know.  Again, it was a situation of wealth, the cornucopia opened for all the little goblins who stole into the banquet chamber, and I was left for years afterward associating the term “family reunion” with nice food that I wasn’t allowed to have.  It was in a large park with green grass and covered picnic areas, with heavy wooden beams.  Frisbees flew.  I don’t even remember now what the nice food was, aside from watermelon.

We went on at least one, possibly more excursions to mountains and forests.  On one such occasion I almost got hit by a car, running across a road – one of those roads that curves around a hill and has no need for crosswalks or sidewalks.  Mom yelled on me.  On another trip, my dad got a tick on his ass, and my mom got it out while we were standing around, looking away.  There were big trees and a big wooden suspension bridge there.  Might it have been the famous Redwood Forest?  My dad has a deep voice and at some points in his life has successfully come off as Joe Coolguy, but I remember many more occasions of him suffering humiliations and defeats.

For that and other trips, I remember the car we were in – a big rusty white station wagon I’ve previously mentioned.  Once again, my midj’ing of it:

I remember vaguely sleeping in it, with the back seats folded forward.  Car interiors now tend to be plastic; this was unyielding and cold metal.  A thin sleeping bag doesn’t much improve that, but it’s fun to feel adventurous.

I might remember more bits and bobs about this part of my life sometime, but for now, one last thing that stands out for me.  We used to go to a big drive-in theater.  In my memory it was much much larger than the late-surviving one from my town of Auburn WA, which finally shuffled off the mortal coil in 2012.

I don’t know how old I was, but I must have felt like a non-presence in the back seat – some assumption I would pass out hard enough they could watch whatever they wanted without forming lifetime memories in my skullpiece.  Guess again, fools!  I remember impressions of a racecar driver movie with one brief scene of full frontal nudity.  Was it Stroker Ace?  There was one with Kenny Rogers, right?  Why am I imagining there was one with John Denver?  Don’t @ me bro.

I will also cherish the memories of memories of Dolly Parton and co-stars doing weird adult things in Nine to Five.  I’d put Dabney Coleman in bondage too.  Understandable…  As much as the movie was ostensibly about ladies getting revenge for dude malfeasance, in retrospect it feels like a masochist’s wet dream.  Who’s been a naughty boy?  Don’t hurt me ladies.  Wink.

We watched some kind of Disney movies too.  At some point in my life, I’ve seen Snow White, Cinderella, 101 Dalmations, and The Rescuers, any one of which might have been in that theater, as far as my brain can work out.  But more memorable is what I was not supposed to be seeing.

Looking out the back window while some kid movie was playing in front, I saw an adult cartoon that strains believability.  I don’t think it was Fantastic Planet, though you’re going to want to tell me it was.  It was much pervier.  In my faint baby memories, it involved cartoon colored people in a fantasy environment, with their naughty bits all hanging out, and sex scenes.  No, not Heavy Metal either.  In my head, the plot was about somebody losing his turquoise cartoon wiener and trying to find it, like the story of Detachable Penis by King Missile, long form.  At some point in the 1990s, I came across a likely suspect for this movie at a Suncoast Video in the Supermall.  I thought for sure I’d remember what it was called this time, but no.  Suncoast went out of business and I never saw it again.  Back to KinderTrauma with my ass.

flashing lights on this video

–