This is my fifth post, for age 5, of the October Memoir and Backstory Challenge hosted by Jane Anne McLachlan. My previous posts:  Baby Speed Eater,  Two Tales, Curls, and Most Magical Christmas.

Kindergarten turned out to have more of an impact than it first appeared. You’re five, you go to kindergarten, right? Well, that was true for me, but it wasn’t true for most of the kids that I ended up going through school with. I moved at the beginning of first grade to a school district that provided public school kindergarten for the first time that year. My brother was in the very first kindergarten class. I was the only first grader who attended a public school kindergarten. My experience proved invaluable, making the transition to a new school much less harrowing because I had a year of experience under my belt that the other students didn’t have.

So, here’s a kindergarten class that’s pretty much full of strangers since these aren’t the kids I went to school with.

Arcadia Elem School, Grade K AM, Mrs Hedrick, Mr Novak Prin, 1967 & 1968

I’m second row from the top, second from the right in a striped shirt with orange vest. The only other student I recognize now is the girl standing next to me: Chris Steele who lived two doors down for me and we were best friends for the two years that I lived in Utah.

Don’t you love the teacher? I did. If you sent over to Central Casting for a kindergarten teacher from the mid-1960s, she would surely look just like Mrs. Hedrick.

My other memento for kindergarten is this drawing — another bit of ephemera that I was surprised my mother kept.

Eyelashes!

According to my mother, the teacher said that drawing eyelashes showed a level of detail unusual in a kindergarten student and boded well for my intelligence. I always drew hair like that — curls, you know.