National Kindergarten/Hate Week
By:
Lou Macaluso
An excerpt from Lou Macaluso’s baby boomer autobiographical
work: Clown
Town
The summer started with Mr. Charleston’s death and ended
with my first day of school. On
that first day, my mother walked me to Park
Elementary School, less than a block
from our house. Beth, my older
sister, left early to avoid the embarrassment of being seen walking to school
with her mother. Mike, my younger
boyhood buddy, waved from his kitchen window as we left.
Actually, he was more excited about me starting school than
I was. Mike was an only child at
the time. His parents convinced him that school was fun and exciting, so he was
eager to experience that fun and excitement vicariously through me.
The image that I recall after that is a line of little kids
bawling and clutching their moms who were bawling and clutching their kids.
After the painful mother-child separations, Miss Hickey,
the kindergarten teacher, took guardianship of us.
Being taught by Miss Hickey was a rite of passage that every kid in my
neighborhood had to experience. An
elderly and tyrannical spinster schoolteacher, she wore winged black-rimmed
glasses and combed her short black-dyed hair straight back.
As if to remind others or herself that she commanded the respect that
comes with age, she left a single-inch column of her hair its natural gray-ash
color; it ran from the top of her forehead and tapered to the back of her neck.
“Okay,” Miss Hickey began, as everyone sat cross-legged on
the warm tile floor and faced her, seated on a wooden chair, “let’s get to know
each other. We’ll start with me; I
am Miss Hickey, your teacher, and for the time we spend together, I am your
mother, your father, and your God.
That’s all you need to know about me.
Now let’s get to know you.
Young lady with the pretty blue and white dress, please stand up and tell us
your name.”
The girl sitting next to me rose to her feet and rocked
from one black and white saddle shoe and white anklet sock to the other.
Her ruffled dress fluffed out and over my head like an umbrella.
“My name is Susanne,”
“Susanne! What
a pretty name!” Miss Hickey
exclaimed, “And we will remember Susanne for her long beautiful blonde hair!
And how about you, boy?”
I peered from under Susanne’s dress.
“Yes, you!” she said like a drill sergeant. “Stand up and
tell us your name!”
I stood up. My nervousness took a different form from
Susanne’s. My body stood like a
soldier at attention. I spoke as if
I were in boot camp. “My name is Louis, ma’am!”
“Louis! Well, we’ll remember Louis from those thick
yellow-rimmed glasses that he’s wearing!”
Everyone broke into laughter.
Time may have distorted the events of that day, but, that
shocking embarrassing moment scorched my memory forever.
It was something like “that feeling” when Mr. Charleston looked at me
before he died… but a little different, too.
I didn’t feel vulnerable like when I faced death; I felt aggressive.
I didn’t know what to do…so I laughed with them and sat down
A new feeling evolved called self-consciousness.
Louis evolved—a “pudgie”
little boy with curly brown hair; he wore thick glasses to correct what the
doctor called “lazy eye,” which meant that the left eye crossed inward and made
him look like a freak without his glasses
I hated school, I hated Miss Hickey and I hated myself.
This humiliated and hostile little man vowed revenge on
Miss Hickey as he secretly rubbed a booger into Susanne’s pretty blue and white
dress.
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