My Bio - The Early Years

I was the only one of my siblings to attend nursery; I was too active for my mother, something like that – she had to get me out of the house. My siblings, let it be known, are all girls, so I have sisters, so of course they were easier. We all know that girls are easier than boys.

My older sister, though, really would have gone to nursery but for the fact that it didn’t exist then, so my mother sent her to kindergarten a year early, as a result of which she was a year older than her classmates from then on.

That, however, is not my problem.

I went to nursery, then to kindergarten, and I had the same teacher, Mrs. Z, for both years. And there was a second teacher that I vaguely recall, or a teacher’s aide maybe, Mrs. Tissue, something like that, my memory could be imperfect in regard to her actual name. I think she was older than Mrs. Z anyway, but maybe she wasn’t. I was small myself, so my perspective wasn’t perfect.

I could read, I’m not sure when I learned, but certainly in kindergarten I could read. My sister taught me, the same sister that was a year older than all the classmates, that sister, which makes sense because she is older than I am.

Let me say here that my sister is older than I am. When she taught me to read, she was 4 years my senior. Now she is just senior…

She taught me to read, and she taught me phonetically. In grade one, the teacher taught my classmates to read. She did not teach me, because I knew how already. But I observed that she did not teach reading phonetically, that is she did not teach the actual sounds of the letters, she taught holistically, by words. This says “cat,” this says “dog,” this says “holistic.” I didn’t get it. How will any one learn to read that way, I wondered. I still wonder. Some of my class mates went on the become doctors, I can’t prove that they ever learned to read.

I knew how to read in kindergarten. I was one of two such students, the other being IM. There was a difference though. IM publicized his knowledge; I did not publicize mine. I kept quiet, which I think was characteristic of me in those days. The teacher did not know that I could read. I did not tell her, nor, interestingly, did my parents.

I think that my parents knew that I could read then. I think so.

I wonder….

This is what I remember. It was the last day of kindergarten, and we went to the zoo. I remember going to Aunt Sally’s Farm, which was a kind of petting zoo wholly with the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg. Aunt Sally’s Farm disappeared years and years ago, though it may have been revived, and I say that based on the results of googling “Aunt Sally’s Farm Winnipeg.”

Well on the way to the zoo, or on the way back, we were in the car, because that’s how we got to and from the zoo, in cars, and I was reading the signs, and I was reading them out loud: “Stop,” “Yield,” “no parking,” “men with hats crossing,” etc. And the teacher, with whom I was privileged to be in the same car, noticed. VSLP can read! She said. The last day of school and we find out that VSLP can read! I remember that. I was 6.

Another thing I remember about kindergarten. IM, the reader, and his friend PR. they used to steal my hat every morning before class, and toss it back and forth, and not give it back, and I would run back and forth trying to recover my hat, though I may have given up at some point, I don’t remember. I told my father about this, and his response was tell them I said not to.

I did that, you know. My father says don’t take my hat, I said. Oh! They said. Let us give it back right away they said! No, they didn’t. They did not say that. It made no difference to them whatsoever. They continued to torment me, until one day one of them said, I think it was PR, he said let’s give back his hat. And that was the end of that episode.

That’s it really. I will just share this one more bit of trivia. I got a ride to school, and I got a ride home. And we had some kind of arrangement to take other kids home. One was DK, and he would take the snow brush, because we live in Canada so our Car has an implement which on one side has a brush for snow, and on the other side has a scraper for ice, and he would take this thing, and my sister was in the car, not my older sister, because she was in school, grade 5, but my younger sister, the next younger one, because my most youngest one did not exist, and he would take this brush, and say, with glee, let’s brush her face!

And so my sister would whine and complain, she was very small, about 2 I guess, because she did not like to have her face brushed. And my father, who was driving, wasn’t crazy about it, and he’d say something like stop that. And so I guess we’d stop it. And when I say we, I mean he would stop it, because I had nothing to do with any face brushing activities. I was too busy reading the traffic signs…

Postscript: I googled IM, PR, and DK. The only one I found was IM, and he is a professor somewhere, and there is a picture of him wearing a hat.