Story A Day #23 The Signature

If my five-year-old self was in kindergarten today, I would be labelled with Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder and placed on Ritalin.  My exuberance, independence and unrelenting tendency to think outside the box would be squashed in order that I conform.  Pressure to conform would not come from peers but from teachers too overwhelmed and stifled by multiple rules and restrictions to appreciate a real child.  I was lucky because when I was young precocious kids were considered interesting -  unless they disrupted the rest of the class in which case some time standing in the corner would be in order.  I got to know many corners in many classrooms in my early school years.  And while I never got the dreaded strap, I did write many lines and spent more than one afternoon sitting on my hands after school.  My biggest crime was talking.   I talked and talked and asked and asked and there was just never enough time in the day for all I had to say and all I wanted to learn.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

My mind goes back to the time when I had just started kindergarten.   Kindergarten, that most wonderful of places with lots of other children, and books and crayons and endless other curious things.  I remember learning to colour one day; move the crayon side to side, not up and down or in a scribble motion.  It looks nicer that way.  We had to have a nap every day, which I hated!  I didn’t nap at home!  I protested but not too much when I noticed all the other kids getting their blankets out and spreading them on the floor.  I could never figure out how the other kids always knew what to do but I was usually completely at sea.  I realize now that I probably wasn’t listening when the teacher gave instructions, but back then it was all a big mystery.  I obediently flopped down on my yellow flannel blanket with the “pollywogs” all over it.  Paisley was not a word I had ever heard but I know I would have loved it if I had.  I loved words, I ate them up and spit them out with wondrous abandon.   Lying on my little blanket I would listen to the record the teacher played  “ding dong bell Pussy’s in the well....”  and all those favourites.   But I would get bored and start bothering the child beside me.  And then I would get in trouble, or get moved.   Naptime was agonizing and much too long.  

One day the teacher mentioned something about a report card.  It was a letter that would go home to my parents to tell them how I was doing at school.  I was very excited about this.  Wow!  A whole letter just about me.   I shared my parent’s attention with a sickeningly sweet little brother that everyone adored and to think of a letter just about me was almost too great a thing to imagine.  At the end of class we were all given our report cards and told not to lose them.   This was in the days when mothers weren’t  “smothers” and children actually walked to school and back.  Alone.   Yes, at five years old.  No big deal.  I knew the way.   And I knew the alternate way if the big black dog was out in his yard.   So, off I went home with my prized report card.   I presented it to my mother who smiled and told me to put it on the table for my dad to see when he got home.  That was it?   I couldn’t believe it!   She didn’t say she was proud of me or give me a hug or a cookie or anything.   More importantly, she didn’t read it to me!!    What did it say?  I wanted to know!  Was I a good girl?  Smart?  Helpful?  Did I share?   All those things that kindergarteners are supposed to learn.   Was my colouring up to speed?   But I knew better than to bother my mother and ask her to read it to me.  She was busy with the other child.  The cute one. 

When my father got home that night and we were sitting at dinner, my mother regaled him with tales of all the things my brother had said during the day.  I was beside myself waiting for him to read my report card!   I wanted to yell at him “Daddy read it, it’s about me!” but I knew better than that.  You didn’t tell my father what to do.  You waited till he got around to it.   Finally, he read it.   And he looked at me and said: “ Can you read yet?”   Could I read yet?   I only wished!  I had wanted to read since I came out of the womb.   My whole life’s purpose was to get hold of a book and learn to read it.  It was my main reason for going to school after all.  I had heard that’s where you learn to read.   And it hadn’t happened yet!    And my Dad was thinking it should!   Something was wrong.  But I soon forgot about that when he left the table and left my report card sitting there.   I decided since no one was going to read it to me, I would try to read it myself.   After all, I was in kindergarten, surely I could figure it out for myself. 

 I looked at the piece of paper with the printing all over it.   It didn’t make any sense to me.  But wait, there was my name.  I could read that.   And it was there a lot.   Other than that, it might as well have been Chinese for all the good it did me.   And then I saw the dotted line at the bottom of the report card.  I remembered the teacher talking about that dotted line and how important it was to get our mommy or daddy to put their name on it before we brought it back.   I went to my father who was sitting reading the paper and told him.   He ignored me.  I found my mother and asked her to put her name on it.   She was busy with the beast and she told me she would do it later.  I stuck my tongue out at him and left the room and went back to the kitchen table.   What if they forgot to sign the report card?  I would be in trouble!  I was very anxious about this and yet afraid to make a fuss.  You didn’t do that at my house.  Not without risking punishment.   Was punishment worth it to get this card signed?   In my five-year-old mind nothing was worth punishment, in particular my father’s brand of punishment. 

All at once I came up with the solution.  I would sign the report card myself!   My mother had been teaching me how to write my name and I could write Mommy and Daddy.  I got the pen my father used for his crosswords and I went to work carefully writing “Daddy” on the dotted line of my report card.  I felt so smart and helpful!

             When my father saw what I had done he was furious and told me I was stupid.   But my mother had a different reaction.   While she was annoyed and tried to erase the ink with the ink eraser, I could see the laughter in her eyes and the smile at the corner of her mouth.   I had done something “cute”.  Just like my brother.  My father signed the report card under the “daddy” and the next day I took it to school.   I proudly handed the report card to my teacher.   I can still hear the laughter coming from out in the hall as she showed my genius handiwork to other teachers.  It was the kind of laughter that didn’t come my way very often, the kind of laughter that my brother inspired in almost everyone he met and the kind of laughter I have strived to earn throughout my life.