Different Times

  I remember my first day of kindergarten.  The high mountain air was clear, the scant poplars gone to yellow and drifting in the breeze that brought the sound of the dries from the mines and their steam clouds rising to the air.  I walked with my hand in my mother’s and remember letting go in the room to go see the aquarium which I reveled in as a distraction from the buzzing socialization around me.  Behind the aquarium was a statue of The Blessed Virgin Mary standing on top of the world, a snake trapped under her feet.  Her blue cape was the most beautiful color and the look on her face was entirely different than the look on Sister Mary Theodata’s. 

  I didn’t know any of the other kids.  Everyone was dressed up in clothes they did not normally wear and everyone was nervous and at least half of us were scared.  My older brother had said “don’t embarrass us all by getting the shit kicked out of you on day one.”  I looked around, trying to imagine which one of the boys would be able to do that.  I relaxed, as soon as I realized it would take more than one.  I did not have a sister, so being in a room with so many girls, all of them wearing dresses, was a totally unexpected bonus.  Exotic, fragile and ethereal.  I looked for the faerie dust in their wake.  This was a great gift to someone who saw the devil everywhere and woke up frequently with nightmares of his unwanted flaming presence in the world.

  The old nun, who someone said “taught my grandma” smelled like old popcorn.  Thin and tall she told us the number one rule was to only speak if she asked us a question and to keep our hands to ourselves.  No monkey business in here.  I spent much of the rest of the morning thinking of the monkeys that lived in the house down on Quartz St.  The family owned a shoe store and brought the monkeys in as an attraction.  On Sundays we would go by the Victorian house and try to catch a glimpse of them up in the attic windows.

  Before kindergarten started I had contracted a case of the mumps.  It only manifested on one side and the doctor joked that I only had “half a mump.”  Even though the first day of school was not traumatic, I decided that, essentially, it wasn’t for me.  I hated the smell of the ink on the mimeographs we were given to put to the crayons and it freaked me out to see that at least two kids there were surreptitious Elmer’s Paste eaters.  So, in the morning, I tried to play my cards by going out and laying own in the back yard.  I remember staring up into the sky at the clouds and sparrows.  My mother saw me out the kitchen window and poked her head out the back screen yelling for me to get up off the ground where I would get all dirty.  I told her I couldn’t because the other half of the mumps came back.  She came and got me and brought me into the house.  She let me miss the first hour of the second day of kindergarten so she could make me a cup of hot chocolate.

  Those were different times.  I never had to struggle with the guilt of not being in the classroom when the massacre began.  All I had to worry about was wiping my ass right and not letting Robbie Robertson steal any more of my pencils.  I wondered at what Jimmy said about Sister Theodata, that she was too old to die.  I wondered about the Satan snake beneath the feet of Mary and how the big toe of her right foot seemed to be crushing part of Canada which I only knew about because that was where mom went to kindergarten in a horse driven sleigh.

   I didn’t worry about someone coming into the class room and pumping twenty rounds in my head.

To the people who say that this happens because there is not enough god in the classroom I do not know how to respond to them, for how what good does it do to ask an insane person if they are crazy?  To the people who say those who pushed for gun control have the blood of innocents on their hands I can only ask if they will soon be returning to planet Romulus, and when they do, could they all please take their motherfucking guns with them.

   My last day of kindergarten I got in a fight with Robbie Robertson for stealing my pencil.  After some older boys broke it up out on the play ground Mary Anne McCarthy came up and told me how stupid  I was, that she had asked me earlier in the day if she could borrow it.  I had a bloody nose and Robbie had a scraped up chin.

   We became friends after that and I fell in love with Mary Anne McCarthy until I saw her kissing Mike Maloney behind the convent lilacs trees.

  We all made it through grade school without being shot.