Came in and out of the chitchen umpteen times this afternoon dealing with dishes and garbage and what not and finally looked over at my laptop and whooooaah! Noooo frooog! The frooog is not really bloooo. That’s an effect of the color I have that particular string of LED lights set to. (I think he got it at Ace Hardware…)

I remember my daughters’ ages because I was there when they were BORN! Becquet? Hmmm… She was riding a bicycle today. She was obviously new at it and there were training wheels but still I had to ask the question: Is she going into kindergarten in the fall? No, she’s only four. There are plenty of good pre-school options here on The Planet Ann Arbor and I’ll bet she is enrolled in one of them.

I did send a 4-year-old to kindergarten but a couple things were different back then. 1) The age cut-off date was December 1. 2) My child turned five in October. (Becquet has a March birthday so she wouldn’t have been eligible to start at four even with the old cut-off date.) I wasn’t worried about sending my child to kindergarten but apparently the teacher, when we did our kindergarten “interview”, thought we were nuts sending a small-for-her-age 4-year-old off to kindergarten. At our first kindergarten conference, she ‘fessed up about that thought and told us she had been wrong. Our little munchkin fit right in.

I was glad not to have to wait another year for her to start school. I had a January birthday but was probably ready for kindergarten (academically at least) the year before I was legal to go and The Comm tried to get them to let me go a year early (because I was probably driving her nuts). It was a non-starter.

There was no pre-school available* for my “gap year” so she enrolled me in ballet and tap lessons (which I wasn’t particularly talented at) and I probably harassed my little brother most of the rest of the time. Oh yeah, there was Sunday School which was pretty benign since we attended a mainstream Methodist church. But it was only occasionally academic and I craved academic “stuff”.

Although ultimately I think it was okay I didn’t get sent to school early, I was ALWAYS bored by the academics the school served up and the REVIEW that happened for WEEKS every fall. Gimme more homework. Yes, really. In 9th grade, I FINALLY got tracked into what then passed for today’s AP classes. (I am not in favor of rigid “tracking” systems but it did help me *personally*.) My 4-year-old kindergartner did just fine all the way through school and is a wonderful, responsible adult.

I didn’t talk to the neighbor for a long time because she had to catch up with Becquet and I needed to go and fling various undergarments. I didn’t tell the neighbor that although I’m sure she would’ve laughed. I just said I needed to change my clothes.

*In recent years, I told a beloved childhood/facebook friend about the lack of pre-schools available when I was a young five. She said, “Oh but I went to pre-school at the Episcopal (I think) church.” I think that would’ve been open to any paying customer so I can only imagine that the Comm, who could be kind of a snob in those days, had some issue with whoever was teaching or running the school. But who knows.

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