MY DEEP, DARK SECRET

Not too many people know the ugly truth about my educational background, and I’m not proud of it, but I was a kindergarten dropout.

Back in the 1950s, the public school had yet to offer kindergarten in my fair town, but there was a private one available, run by John and Hazel Youngmeyer. Auntie Hazel and Uncle John were a rather rotund, older couple who operated a kindergarten out of their big brick house, just a few blocks from where I lived. In my mind, their joint should have been renamed Youngmeyer’s House of Horrors. I hated kindergarten!!

First off, other than Brother Beans, I wasn’t used to being around boys who tortured me. For some reason, my pony tail became a pulling magnet. These real-life Dennis the Menaces couldn’t keep their hands off my hair. Worse than the 5-year-old thugs, however, was Uncle John himself. I was terrified of him, and it didn’t help that he threatened to put all bad little boys and girls in his deep, dark basement. Now, I was all for hair yankers being shoved down the steps and locked up for the rest of his natural lives, but I wanted nothing of it for myself!

After three days of me sitting on Aunt Hazel’s lap crying all afternoon, Mama Bore, though skeptical, took mercy on her baby and let me drop out--against the advice of the Youngmeyers, of course. Mom said they warned her that she was opening the door to all sorts of evils by letting me have my way, and I would be poorly prepared for first grade.

Well, as it turned out, no harm was done. I loved elementary school and Mom breathed a sigh of relief that I was not deprived of a first-class education by missing out on hell house, er…kindergarten.

Fast forward. ---A few years ago, my childhood pal Rat was home from Vermont and we went riding around our old stomping grounds. He happened to drive by the Youngmeyer’s home.

“Oh, god, wasn’t Mr. Youngmeyer scary?” Rat said. “I was always afraid he was going to send me down to his dungeon.”

“You mean I wasn’t imagining that?” I replied. “All these years I thought maybe I had just made that up as an excuse to drop out. Mom never seemed sure that I was telling the truth.”

I made Rat take a beeline to Mama Bore’s house to repeat the story.

“See, Mom, I wasn’t lying to you,” I said. “Mr. Youngmeyer DID threaten to lock us in his basement.”

It took about 50 years, but I was finally vindicated. Who knows what would have happened if I’d sucked it up and stayed at Aunt Hazel and Uncle John's. Why, I might have suffered some kindergarten-induced trauma and been admitted to a loony bin…where I’d most likely still be living in the basement, crying like a baby, and pulling on my own hair. Fortunately, I got out before any possible permanent damage was done. Now, instead of feeling like a kindergarten flunky, I consider myself to have been the smartest kid in the class!