Kindergarten, playground of sorrows. For the first time ever, I have to get up early to go somewhere with others, and it is so hard to get up early, because I have been up so late the night before watching the Carson Show.
I enjoy the great Carnac who wears a turban and predicts answers to questions inside sealed envelopes. This is a joke in reverse, because you get the punchline, but then the funny part is the question part of the joke, which comes second, after he opens the envelope. I like this sort of humor: it’s all in the arrangement—inevitably whatever comes last is funniest.
On the playground, we play a game called Chasing Boys in which all those who are boys run very fast from all those who are girls. I find it hard to tell the boys apart. None of them have mustaches, which I admire. I find it hard to tell the girls apart, also, in their ponytails which curl into one ringlet and their matching shorty outfits and their ankle socks and jelly shoes. Some girls chase a boy, and should he be caught, attempt to kiss him. If I catch a boy, I involve myself in a fight. This is how I find out often who is tougher than me. Like the boy who must wear a stocking cap on account of having had his head shaved due to lice. He is tougher than me. He is used to being fought and he has toughened up. My toughness does not make me very popular on the playground, but luckily we play only very briefly before we come in for snack and nap.
I don’t mind snack, but I do not ever like nap. On rare occasions I am forced to take a nap in my own home, I suspect, because everyone is fatigued of my hamminess and my dancing about in my Wonder Woman underoos, attempting to lift tables. Sometimes I lift these tables, and sometimes there are injuries. On such instances, when I am forced to take a nap, I do not sleep. I only pretend to sleep, while climbing on my canopy bed like it is a jungle gym until my brother slips into the room and begins to breathe like Darth Vader and I run screaming through the house in my underoos. Sometimes, this ends in an actual nap following the dénouement of the Vader tantrum. I have screamed and sobbed and thrashed about and have choked on my spit and begun to hyperventilate and this ends with me in a dark room at twilight, finally sleeping, against my will, falling to the will of others.
In kindergarten, I am told that I must nap on a mat, so I pretend to nap there, in the dark of the room, but I do not nap, instead I count the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and then meditate upon the creatures on the bulletin board that are made of letters. They are the alphabet, but they are also individual colorful monsters, with claws and fur and teeth and sometimes horns. Each monster letter can sort of cavort his or her way into a word, but the monster letter always begins the word, and the following letters are just regular pieces of font. I take a particular interest in the monster J, which is my special letter for myself and my dad. She is purple and furry and has a single eye with batting lashes, and clawed hands and feet, and a lolling tongue. The D is also okay, I guess, even though it is for my mom and my brother. The D is orange (not my favorite) but has horns and leopard spots. I cannot yet read the words, but I can already see the hierarchy. The other letters are nondescript. They are pawns in the game of the monster letter. The monster letter exacts her will on others of her species; she is the master of the word!