One of my cousins just asked me if I remember kindergarten because all she can recall is the rest time. I remember more than that.

Our kindergarten was half a day. The country kids (my cousin Cathy) went in the morning and town kids (me) in the afternoon, or maybe it was the other way around. There was a family heirloom nap mat that all the older cousins had used, and we shared it – I would get it out of the country kids’ bin and put it back in the town kids’ bin. I remember having graham crackers and milk every day with chocolate milk on Wednesdays, and the mothers bringing in cake for birthdays. My birthday is in August, so I never got to celebrate at school like that. Our teacher was Mrs. Bradney, and she also taught my dad and his siblings when they were in kindergarten, as well as my cousins.



Every year the kindergarten class put on a play/musical with costumes, some of them made from crepe paper. My role was Snow White and my mother made a dress for me. The dwarves had slippers stuffed with cotton, and they were supposed to skip up to me and go to the side. In the rehearsals Ivan Minch fell down, so I was always nervous until they were done with that skipping.

When my sister was in the play she was Peter the Pumpkin Eater’s wife and had a beautiful big orange pumpkin covered with crepe paper. I think my mother made it. It had a thumbtack right in the center of the bottom, the sharp point sticking up, so she couldn’t sit in it all the way.

When I was in college I went to watch one of Mrs. Bradney’s kindergarten plays, and she was out there on the stage positioning the children where they were supposed to stand. I wonder if little kids got dumber over the years, or she was out there helping us, too, and I forgot. They were dressed like a garden and sang that song “I’m a lonely little petunia in the onion patch.”



Isn't that a cute song for little kids to perform? They probably wouldn't understand what it was all about.