One day left of Kindergarten

I took my lunch break and joined the family at Caleb's Kindergarten End of School Celebration. It was cool. They had food, games and lots of playing.

Here are some pics:



Watching Caleb play with his friends sent me back to my year as a Kindergartner some 27 years ago. How I remember certain things like it were yesterday. We lived in two places and I went to two kindergartens. The first was Sunset Elementary and we lived in a yellow duplex. The second was South Gate Dragons and we lived in a blue house. 

Here are a few of the funniest:

1. At the yellow duplex, Gary and I and two naughty friends tried to smoke some used cigarette butts that we picked up from the neighbor kids yard. We used one of those low to the ground briquette grills to hold the fire while we tried to light the cigarettes. Good thing Mom was vigilant and had a lawn sprinkler close by because our fire spilled out of our container and started the weeds on fire. I promise that was the once and only time I tried to smoke - crazy that I was in kindergarten.
   
2. I also remember trying to climb the splintery power pole outside our house. I slipped and got poked in the belly by a long screw. I still have the scar.
   
3. I remember another scar when I climbed the side fence. The builder used the equivelant of railroad ties and wouldn't you know it, I slipped and got 1/2" of broken splinters in the inside of my arm. Mom took me to the ER. I was a basket case crying for her and didn't even peep in the ER.
   
4. I remember Mom babysitting a girl that was always peeing her pants and having to use my pants. which she also peed in. I really disliked her for that and in the end, I remember blaming her for my own bed wetting habit. ;-) My logic - something from her passed in those jeans that I wore and made me wet the bed. Hahaha 
   
5. I couldn't help but steal polished pretty rocks from some old lady's front steps. I did it a bunch of times too and thought nothing of it. ;-) Perhaps that explains why Caleb has his own little rock collecting fetish.
   
6. I learned to ride a bike and ran into the back of a parked car at the bottom of the hill and got the wind knocked out of me bad. Ouch.
   
7. I also remember having an absolute fascination with motorcycles then - the same neighbor that tempted me with cigarettes had a picture of a bike that is still in my head.

Then, midway through school, we moved to the blue house.

1. I had a buddy named Chris and another named Wendy. Wendy invited us over all the time to play but she wanted to play barbies and the other Chris was okay with that so they'd play and I'd go home to ride my bike.
2. I played kiss tag a handful of times at recess and due to Chris' pressure had Wendy pinned under me on the ground by our SouthGate Dragon's school sign.  I was 6 inches from kissing her. In the end, I was too nervous and so the other Chris popped Wendy a big Kindergarten smacker. ;-) She struggled like she didn't want to be kissed but she liked both of us, and we knew it.
3. There was a guy in our neighborhood whose father built him this cool two story fort in their backyard and it had the rough hewn bark covered slabs of wood on the outside so it felt like a real 1800s sort of fort. 
4. I remember Ronnie Wright lived in the culdesac one over from me and we played the Atari Asteroids game as often as possible.
5. Ronnie and I also had elastic in common - that is we both had super hero elastic undies and t-shirts and many times, we would strip down to our skivvies and go slippy sliding on his irrigated bare grass. It was a ton of fun. 
6. I looked up Ronnie a few years back and he was playing professional minor league baseball.
7. I remember when Krystal was born. We were given an oriental cabbage meal one evening from a ward member and I wanted to puke when I tasted it. I think I went to bed hungry.
8. I remember the night I woke screaming after watching the Star Trek episode where the Doc pulled an alien looking ear wig out of the Eastern European speaking guy's ear. It had done some major damage to his brain. Well, I had a "way too real" dream that ear wigs had invaded my ears and were all over my body. Ughhh! It took my parents a long time to convince me it wasn't real.

Funny memories huh? What is your funniest kindergarten memory?