kindergarten

i only went to kindergarten for one week. so it is easy to remember.
kelly clegg and jessica (?) opunui were both in my class. we had mrs. larsen. from what i remember she was about the same size as me and about 97 years old. she was shrunken and wrinkly and looked like she would break. my mom says that this isn't true but it is what i remember.
kindergarten was boring but fun.
i could already read. (i learned at challenger preschool, did i write about that school?) i remember a puppet that sang "be careful when you cross the street" at the end of each day. i kind of remember sitting on the rug, and i remember show and tell and play time.
one day someone came into class and got me while we were gluing a paper balloon and string to a piece of paper. i was kind of sad to leave but i went with her.
she was the school counselor. she took me to her office that was full of posters about divorce and child abuse and sad kids. and she asked me a bunch of questions about letters.
"what letter is this?"
"A"
"and what does it say?"
"i don't know"
i knew perfectly well what the letter A said, but the cards she was showing me had fine print on them that i couldn't read and i thought that is what she was referring to when she said "what does it say"
somehow i still got into first grade. and without any explanation, the next week i went to mrs. lilligran's class.
she had white blonde curly hair. she wasn't old, but she was kind of scary.

write an essay

one punishment my mom tried on us was essay writing.
if we were bad we had to go to our rooms, and write a one page essay on a topic she assigned us.
the only paper i remember writing was one on brigham young. she printed out a page of information on him from encarta (encarta! we thought it was so cool! but now the internet is cooler) and i basically just rewrote it into another paper so i could get out of my room. i don't think this form of punishment lasted very long.