Kindergarten - a memory.

I am currently writing and cataloging memories of my childhood for potentially creating an autobiography, and also for my own enjoyment. This is one of the first I documented.

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I don’t remember my first day of kindergarten. In fact, my earliest memory of kindergarten spans back to the second or third day, I believe. Back then I didn’t know I was different, but I found out pretty quickly.

The thing I remember most of all was the light. The trapezium, hexagonal, pentagonal shafts of sunlight falling between the rich fermenting green of the vast brooding trees above me.

As a child, my tiny footsteps would have gone almost unnoticed in that living, majestic place. I barely remember the shades and textures of the dirt beneath my feet due to the overwhelmingly lush textures of greenery and sunlight above me. It was some time before my vision blurred and refocussed and I saw the other children playing in two clearly divisive groups, boys and girls, on opposite ends of the playground.

The girls played with alien-like long limbed barbie dolls, dipping them in and out of a shallow, water-filled clam shell. Something about the pale limbs of the dolls and the breaking and flowing of the water appealed to me immensely, so I gathered up my courage and approached the other girls.

They didn’t seem to be facing me, or paying any attention to me at all. I stood for quite a while, expectantly, but they went on with their chatter and their game as though I didn’t exist. I had a vague feeling of unease and wrongness – but I spoke up anyway.

“Can I play?”

“No.”

With that, they went back to their game. So abruptly and decisively dismissed, I wasn’t sure what to do. I dithered at the fringes of their group, and tried again.

“Can I play?”

“No. Go away.”

Again, it was like I didn’t exist. They spoke and held their dolls and I was so clearly outside their circle, their vision, and their consciousness it was like there was an indestructible glass wall between us.

I thought I had better ‘go away’ like they instructed me to, so away I went. The kindergarten playground was designed as a large square with a central oval circled by a meandering concrete footpath. The corners of the square were grassed and ringed with trees, and the oval had a small climbing gym with a tanbark base. With the boys in one corner of the yard, and the girls in the other, I wandered away from the edge of the yard towards the deserted playground in the centre. There I lost myself in the world of the swing, the metal bars, the levels and stairs and slide. Safe but alone. In between two worlds where I was not wanted.