Kindergarten Enemies

I wasn’t expecting what I got from kindergarten. First of all, I was under the impression that it was pronounced Kinder-garden and that we’d all be playing in the dirt and planting flowers and shit. Instead, there were 100 year old ladies hanging over my head telling me to color that picture of an elf or else I was going to time-out and to stop making that poor boy eat dirt or else I was going to time-out. I basically lived my kindergarten year from the desk in the corner that was time-out. Eventually, they decided I must be ADHD or just mentally incapable of kindergarten because they sat me in a desk, made a circle around me and discussed “what they were going to do with me.” They ended up informing my mother about my behavior, telling her I must have some deficiency. But she knew better than that. I was reading and writing highly above my level and I was bored with kindergarten. She was right and all but they didn’t believe her. All of my other teachers agreed with the kindergarten teachers up until about the 4^th grade.

Anyways, back to kindergarten. The very first day of school, my mom walked me into the classroom to introduce my teacher to me so I wouldn’t be scared. But the teacher wasn’t the first thing I saw. It was a boy who was in my class. His name was Hunter and he was standing on the other side of the sliding glass door to the playground. Hunter and I locked eyes and my heart dropped into my stomach. He gave me a glare and I instantly knew that we would spend our entire kindergarten careers harassing each other for no particular reason. And that’s how I met my first mortal enemy.

We did indeed spend the entire year picking on, beating up and making fun of each other. One day when he was bugging me, I decided I wanted him to leave me alone. I got up and pushed him against a chain-link fence surrounding the playground. That’s how most of my trips to time-out happened.

The most embarrassing part of this mortal enemy business was that, years afterwards (maybe we were 10) I was at the public pool with my brother.

It was extremely awkward but being 10 year olds, we quickly ended the conversation with little attempt at doing it smoothly. I never saw that kid again, but he shall always be remembered as my Kindergarten Arch Enemy.