Kindergarten in Knightstown

 

My younger sister’s kindergarten teacher sent me a Facebook friend request today.  Funny thing is, we moved to Orleans, Indiana in the summer before my first grade year so she was never my kindergarten teacher.  That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, but it does kind of violate my loose and unspoken rule to not friend anyone I do not know directly or have not known long enough to feel some connection to.

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I went to kindergarten in Knightstown, Indiana.  My teacher’s name was Mrs. Stroop.  She had  medium-length brown hair pulled back in some fashion with a part down the center of her head and large glasses.  I don’t remember her being either mean or particularly nice.

Our tables were close to the ground and rectangular shaped.  I would guess there were about six of them with six kids each, three to a side, though that is likely an overestimation.  They were color coded via a round construction paper circle taped at one end.  I sat at the purple table with a kid who had a reputation for being the smartest kid in the class.

I remembered his name well into adulthood but now in my 50’s I can no longer recall it.  He looked like a little man with his hair neatly parted on the side and a kind of quiet gravitas.  I had not yet become acquainted with Mr. Rogers, but in retrospect this boy looked like the child version.  His presence at my table was somehow reassuring, like having our own teacher’s aid if the assignment proved too difficult or inscrutable.  

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Memories at this point are random.  I built a cool extended drag racer with some pieces from a tube-shaped can and then put the finished product back in carefully and put the lid on it thinking I could preserve it indefinitely that way.  Another kid tried to open the can and I prevented him from doing so by saying “No!” in no uncertain terms which got me in trouble with the teacher.  I was preserving my artistic creation for future use but she reframed it as a problem with “sharing”.  It was very un-Mr. Rogers-like of me and simply the beginning of a long and illustrious career of mischievousness in school that put me at odds with many of my teachers.

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That particular school had an old gymnasium attached to it.  On rainy days during recess we ran around pell-mell on the basketball floor and scurried up on the stage with teachers constantly imploring us to get off the stage, slow down, and not shove each other.  There was a Christmas program there that year and I sat in the dark on a chair facing the stage with a few hundred other people.  There was a huge calendar of December on the back wall of the stage.  It was decorated like a winter wonderland that I found strangely comforting and being there at night with my parents only intensified the feeling.  My older sister was in the program wearing an outfit that matched everyone else's that I seem to recollect was a white top and black skirt for the girls and black slacks for the boys.

Sitting a few seats over in the dark was a neighbor of ours.  She was what I would refer to as “rough around the edges”.  She was poor and talked in a way that was full of slang and bad grammar that I found disquieting coming from an adult.  Once when I was at her house her young son was eating peanut butter from the jar and began choking on something.  She became loud and panicky and when the obstruction in his throat was dislodged he vomited.  It might have been a marble.  I did not return to that house and I have not liked peanut butter since.  At the Christmas program her daughter was prancing out on stage behind my sister when suddenly her mother’s voice rang out in the darkness, “Pull up your skirt, Boo Boo!”

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Twelve years later that small gym would become famous.  It was preserved so well over the years without any significant updates that they used it in the movie “Hoosiers” which is set in the 50’s.  I don’t have to tell you how surreal it was to watch that movie as a high school senior and see the gym that I hadn’t been in since kindergarten in 1974.  It continues to this day to be preserved for its historical significance and can be visited if you are ever in Knightstown.  

Interestingly enough my wife went to Butler University and we’ve been to Hinkle Fieldhouse for a basketball game.  That gym was also featured in “Hoosiers” because it was used for years as the venue for the Indiana high school basketball championship game.

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So, Mrs. E, you may have never been my kindergarten teacher but your friend request sent me running down memory lane.  I now anticipate waking up in the middle of the night in the near future with that kid’s name from the purple table made evident to my conscious mind.  I imagine these days he is probably a NASA scientist or CEO of a company… and I am still mischievous.