I was reading a blog called Secret Society of List Makers the other day and the writer was listing things she didn't like as a child that she now does like. I had a hard time thinking of things I disliked as a child, but with some time I came up with a few. That seems to be my way - I need time to remember things in the far past. For the recent past - forget it. I can't remember what I had for lunch the previous day.I am not a list addict so even if I start out numbering, my items will probably become non-listlike at some point. Like with number 1.
1. I hated my uniform in kindergarten. The public school started with first grade so my mother sent me to St. Rose of Lima for kindergarten. We had to wear these almost-Kelly green jumper-type uniforms over white blouses. Ugly, but easy to put on by slipping it over your head. Or so I thought. Many times the sister would look at me and say, "Barbara, go into the cloakroom and turn your uniform around." Yes, "cloak room". It was an old Catholic school building-- oh, who am I kidding? I'm old. In the course of my kindergarten year I had to go into the cloak room about 5 or six times. I never understood why I had to turn my uniform around but I cheerfully complied each time. No problem. It wasn't until May that I figured things out. The uniform actually did have a front and back. The neck was square cut in both the front and back, but the top-stitching came to a point in the middle of the front. In the back, the stitching just went straight across. The light switched on and I never made the mistake again for the rest of the school year.
I never thought another thing about the uniform debacle except when I told that story to a friend in college and she said, "Why didn't she just show you which was the front and which the back? Why did she keep making you go into the cloak room?" Why, indeed?
"Could it be because you weren't Catholic and she wanted to humiliate you?" suggested my friend. I thought that was far-fetched, but I then remembered a few other little incidents. When the sister played the piano to teach us songs, I usually knew the songs already. I would sing the words along with her the first time she sang the lines so the class could learn the song. Once she frowned at me and said, "Barbara, how could you know the words already? Stop that singing until the class learns the song." Hmm. It didn't phase me then, but maybe my friend was right. Shouldn't she have been glad there was one little student she didn't have to teach the words to? And then there was the matter of chapel. Every Wednesday the class trooped down to the church for a service. Since my family wasn't Catholic, and since I now think my mother must have had some animosity toward the Church, my mother did not give me a scarf to put on my head for church. Yes, I am so old that at the time, girls and women had to wear hats or mantillas or scarves on their heads or they would go straight to - But I digress. Since I had no scarf, Sister put a paper plate on my head and I had to make the long trek to chapel through the halls of school holding it on my head. Every Wednesday. Now I realize that she must have had some spare scarves around, any teacher would, but did she let the little Protestant girl wear one? Ha! If she was attempting to humiliate me, and I still find that hard to believe, she never succeeded. I was oblivious. I loved school, loved singing, and even liked the cloak room with its warmth and its odor that I couldn't identify but found pleasant. 2. Garter snakes. I didn't like them as a child. They sunned themselves all over the sidewalks and driveways of our house and the neighbors' because there was a pond at the edge of our back yard which supported hundreds of snake families. In the spring and summer you couldn't take a walk down to the road or over to the neighbors' without coming upon several stretched out languorously in the sun. The boys would terrorize the girls in the playground of school by flipping a snake into the air toward a little girl who would usually run off screaming. I had a reputation as a tomboy (yes, I know we do not use this term anymore, but we did back then in the Dark Ages), and I could not let the boys that I bossed around see any fear. When Tommy H. pulled out a snake and shook it in my face I had to smile and say, "Wow, he's a nice one, Tommy. Let me hold him." Of course Tommy was crestfallen and wasn't going to let a girl touch his instrument of terror. I smiled as he turned away and then wiped the sweat from my forehead when he was gone. But no snakes were ever thrust at me again from any of the boys. Bravado worked. So, I didn't like snakes back then. Hmmm. I still don't like them as an adult. Yes, I know they are not slimy, disgusting creatures. I have touched them and I've even let a python drape itself around my shoulders so my junior high students could lose their fear. But I still think snakes are sneaky, treacherous, icky-looking creatures. I don't have an over-abiding fear of them, but I do not like them. I guess snakes shouldn't be on the list, but they provided such a good life-lesson that I had to discuss them.
3. I hated doing the dishes. I thought it a complete waste of my valuable play time.I should be out climbing trees, chasing boys, throwing rocks into the pond - not washing dishes. It is only recently that I have found any pleasure in washing the dishes. Now I like to run very hot water, fluff up mounds of suds and scrub away. Must be my way of dealing with stress. And I like to see the clean dishes stacked in the strainer. I like the fact that I let them air-dry instead of wiping them dry probably because I think I'm getting away with something. But I still have to put them away in the morning.
So there is my short list of things I didn't like as a child that I do like now. Except for the snakes. Given time, I could probably remember a few more, but I think it would be more fun to think of things I did like as a kid that I don't like now. Like mustard sandwiches.
