Today is lovely if you’re looking out the window. Everything is beautiful, the deep blue sky and the bright sun highlighting the trees in the backyard. The problem is the temperature, only 30°. The high will be 32°. Where did I put that sunscreen?

I didn’t go to kindergarten. Neither did my classmates. There were no kindergartens back then. My mother did attempt to put me in the nursery school offered by the project where we lived. That was when we lived in South Boston. The nursery school was across the street. I remember it was a brick building just like the one where we lived. I also remember I hated it. The first day my mother brought me I left and went home. The same thing happened the second day and the third. I never went back. The first grade was where I started. The school was about three or four blocks away. It was across the street from the convent and beside the rectory. My classroom was up the stairs on the first floor. I remember the room was filled with desks and nearly fifty of us. We had to turn sideways to go up and down the aisles. Sister Redempta was my teacher. She looked old to me. I had an aunt who was a nun so I wasn’t scared of Sister Redempta in her habit. I remember learning to write. First we learned block letters, upper and lower case, then we moved on to cursive, also upper case and lower case. Over the blackboard and around the room were posters of the cursive alphabet. We had a class called penmanship every day.

My favorite subject, because it entailed nothing and because I didn’t know I was being judged was silent reading. The grades in first grade were either S for satisfactory, U for unsatisfactory or I for needs improvement. I always got an S for silent reading. I never knew why. I wondered if it was because my lips and head didn’t move when I read.

I have my eighth grade class picture or rather a copy of it. The original had remained rolled and stored away for so many years it cracked in a few places when I opened it. I decided it was worth keeping so I took it to a camera shop. They reproduced the original without the cracks though you can faintly see them on the copy. It was expensive. It is hung in the bathroom. That sounds strange I’m sure, but my bathroom has all sorts of school memorabilia and some Ding Dong School souvenirs. When I wash my hands or brush my teeth, I look at that picture. I still remember names.

This entry was posted on February 13, 2026 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.