An Inauspicious Beginning to the Academic Life

          I spent two years in Kindergarten.  My mother sent me at age 4  because I was being bullied by the girl across the street.  Judy and I were born the same day, same year, but she had an older brother.  My experience with my granddaughter leaves me to believe that younger sisters of older brothers are much tougher.  The day Judy caught me in the corner between the steps and someone's porch, stuck her arms out straight with tight fists on the end and whirled around hitting me, until I got past her and ran home crying, was the day my mother decided I should go to school.  On the recommendation of my godmother, Loretta Daly, principal of an elementary school herself, she sent me to Ravenhill Academy.

          Ravenhill was a small private, Catholic, girls (after grade 4, co-ed till then) boarding and day school (I was a day student, of course!)  It was run by the Religious of the Assumption, who wore the original "Sister Mary Grape" maroon habits.  Its claim to fame was that Grace Kelly graduated from there.  I was in Kindergarten there when she got married and some of the students went over for the wedding.  It was a big deal.

          I loved Kindergarten.  Ravenhill had 3, 4 and 5 year olds together in a Montessori-like program.  We all wore pastel smocks over our clothes, even the boys (very French; the RA nuns were a French order).  Mother Rose was our main teacher, and there were two lay teachers with her for a class of 22.  I remember sitting in the circle, singing the kindergarten standards "Gray Squirrel" and "I'm a Little Teapot" and having French lessons.  We played with beads on stiff wires for counting and addition and wooden rods, with each inch alternating in green and white for measuring and fractions.   We each had private reading lessons with one of the lay teacher who was a reading specialist.  My mother had started to teach me to read the year before, and I was eager.  I finished kindergarten with a fourth grade reading level as did some of my classmates (and one with a fifth grade level).

          Then I went to first grade.  Since kindergarten wasn't mandatory back then, a lot of kids didn't start school till first grade, so first grade reading was the "Oh, oh, oh.  Look, look, look.  Run Spot, run.  See Spot run." sort of reading, with the non-phonetic first grade primers.   I was bored out of my skull.  Mother Yvonne sometimes let several of us go to the library during reading class, but not always.  Sometimes we had to take our turn with "Run Spot run".

          Also, my mother started car-pooling.  She would alternate with a Mrs. Stater, who had two daughters there, Gail in 5th grade and Mary Anne in sixth.  Problem was, Mary Anne was a bully and I was a coward.

           It didn't take much to scare me.  Mary Anne would come along to the playground when I was on the swings and keep pushing me higher than I wanted to go.  We stayed in the afterschool program where we frequently went hiking on the property.  There was a log over a creek that we crossed, and she would pick me up and threated to drop me off.  There were two more serious incidents, when her mother stopped for something and left us in the car parked on Calumet Street (most Philadelphians know that is one of the steepest streets in the city).  After threatening me and making me cry (it didn't take much), Mary Anne took the brake off the car and let it roll.  We were parallel parked, so it wasn't going anywhere.  One time a high school student hopped in and put the brake on.  The other time the car rolled slowly into the one in front of it, while I screamed hysterically.  I don't remember Mary Anne ever actually hurting me, but I was terrified of her.

          I don't remember how Mother Yvonne got into it.  I must have complained to her about something, probably something Mary Anne did on the playground.  Mother Yvonne said if Mary Anne threatened me or did things to me I should come and tell her.  So I did.

          At the end of the year, Mother Yvonne decided there should be a showdown.  There was a meeting with my mother, me and Mary Anne (but not Mary Anne's mother).  I insisted that Mary Anne had done those things and Mary Anne denied them all.  Mother Yvonne decided they should leave the two of us alone until one of us admitted to lying.  Now really, a 6 year old and a 6th grader who was 11 years old; what kind of sense does that make?  But that's what they did.

          Mary Anne said she would never admit to lying.  We would be there all night, and we would never get dinner and never go home.   However, if I would tell Mother Yvonne that I had lied, she would give me the bag of potato chips she was eating and we would all go home.  I just wanted it to be over, so I took the chips (I have great sympathy for Esau who sold his birthright for a bowl of pottage), went out and told them I had lied.  I had finished first in the class with the reading and religion awards and my mother was now told that I would not be welcome at Ravenhill next year and she should find another school for me!  I was expelled!

          This was the first time I realized that grown-ups can't tell if you are lying.  On the way home I told my mother that the only lie I told was the last one, but she said she had always believed I told the truth and now she couldn't believe me any more.  So that was it.  From then on, if asked a sudden question, I lied.  I did it well: stick close to the truth, remember what you said, don't say anything that someone else might be able to verify.  I ended up believing that truth didn't matter very much, since no one seemed to recognize it anyway.  Took until college to break the habit.  An inauspicious beginning, considering that I would spend a total of 25 years in school (counting two years of kindergarten, of course).