ERT #3: On Why Kindergarten Was More About Life Than We Thought
Man… do you remember when you were five years old? Back then, life was simple. You woke up, ate breakfast,
went to school, napped a little, ate lunch, watched cartoons and giggled, maybe went somewhere with your mommy
or daddy, ate dinner, and went to bed. That was the way to live… simple. No frills, no responsibilities.
School then was easy. We learned the alphabet, we learned arithmetic, maybe we learned how to read. There
was no calculus, no Shakespeare, no chemical formulae, no Franco-Prussian War. Goodness, we saw all those
big kids, those… those scary third-graders. We dared not even look in the eyes of those giants — we didn't
want to get beat up, or anything like that. We treasured our lunch money, and we didn't want to go home
dreading having to explain to our parents how we got that black eye, or tore our pants up. We had no idea,
no perspective, about how life would be. Everything else was so big… we were so tiny. We didn't even know
how big the world was. But the things we heard and saw and thought and knew when we were going to kindergarten
were very relevant, much more relevant than we thought, to what we would experience in the "bigger" world, the
"more real" world.
Do you remember your kindergarten teacher? They seemed like the nicest people in the world to you. You were a
little scared to meet them, sure. But once you got to know the teacher, things got a little easier for your mind.
You weren't as frightened of being in the company of a strange old person as you had been. And all those other kids
in the class, you were a little apprehensive to get to know them, too. But once you recognized that all those kids
were in the same rudderless boat as you were, it was all good. You made friends with some of them, spent your playtime
with them, even. You sat at their table at lunch, and talked about the important things — you know, like cartoons, toys,
those kinds of things. But, after a time, you realized that there were some kids that you didn't like, ones you stayed a
way from. Especially… oh, God forbid… members of the opposite sex. They had cooties, they were ugly,
they were gross. You wanted to keep your distance from them. God help you if you even touched them, you didn't want to catch whatever in
the world they had. You didn't know what they had exactly, but you knew that it was bad, it was icky… yecch! And sure,
things went along, you notice that your teacher was pretty much nice to you all along… yet, after a while, you were somehow
afraid of them. Sure, they seemed nice enough, sure, they acted the part, too, but there was something about them.
Something told you that, if you did them wrong, they would turn on you… make you stay after school, make you miss recess or
playtime, something you really didn't want to do. So, you didn't cross them… you were afraid. Why? How were they so nice,
but, at the same time, somehow casting intimidation into your unknowing heart? It was something you may not have realized then,
but it would become a recurring theme in your life. It all started with kindergarten: those who are authority figures can be very
insidious with underlings who don't know any better, people they can take advantage of easily. They kill you with kindness, and,
before you know it, you're suddenly hypnotized into doing pretty much whatever they say, because you didn't know any better, because
you trusted them blindly. This world would be a whole lot better if we, as five-year-olds, had recognized that we were being strung
along a sugared path and slowly being spellbound into developing unthinking (… yet, apparently, at the same time, thinking! …) states
of mind. See, this… this is where our hypnosis begins. We are suckered into an obedient mindset, a mindset that our superiors along
the way, through grammar school, middle school, and high school, and onto the "real world", only would seem to be willing to strengthen.
Them sneaky little buggers! No wonder so many people are so gutless and unwilling to question authority! Not only were we educated on
the three R's in kindergarten, but also were we educated to obey without questioning, that they are right, and we are wrong. There's
respecting your elders… and there's blindly acquiescing to your elders. The former is absolutely what you should do… the latter is
more along the lines of what we've been taught to do. It's like we get our blindfold when we enter kindergarten, and we never really
take it off until we graduate… some actually never do it. (Actually, at some points during the process, this is more like the blind
leading the blind than anything else… but that's another story for another time!) And you know those kids you started to know and
hang out with, and those kids you shunned because you could never really seem to get along with? Some of those kids who tended to
associate with you, you know they were only doing it because they had some ulterior motives. They were doing it just so they could
get some answers from you on the homeworks, or "borrow" your lunch money, things like that. It's the same way nowadays. Some of them
will just use you to, I don't know, get a significant other, get some money off you, get a high-paying job, some extra benefits, stuff
kinda like that. And, goodness, here's one of the few things we kindergarteners knew that we were doing, something we were very
prescient about: thinking that those kids of the opposite sex had "cooties". Because, let me tell you, we still think they do. We
may not make it sound as puerile as we did when we were five, but it's the same damn thing. We still can't figure out the opposite
sex. We still have no idea what to do around them to completely satisfy them. We don't want to have anything to do with them unless
it's absolutely necessary. Sure, we may have girlfriends/boyfriends, fiancées/fiancés, wives/husbands now. But we still, in a way,
think they have "cooties". Again, it's not so childish as that. But, when you think about it, you may really be madly in love with
someone, but there will be times, many and near between, where you just don't know what to do about them. They do have cooties, albeit
of a different kind — not really the kind you get from touching them. The kind you get from looking at them, thinking about them,
talking to them… and, actually, yes, sometimes from touching them. (No one said that cooties were bad… they're just things that make
you feel really odd and unnatural.) So kindergarten did teach us something useful, after all.
And what did we learn today, class? We learned that unquestionably obeying our elders is supposedly good, that some of our "friends"
really only have ulterior motives, that people can sugarcoat their feelings toward you to lure you into a façade of trust only to burn
you in the end, and that people of the opposite sex are forever going to escape our limits of understanding.
Ahh… but life was so much simpler then…
Back to the Extended Random Thoughts…
Back to the Fountain of Quirkiness…