While my four-year-old niece was visiting last weekend, she told me all about her boyfriend, Connor. There’s a girl in their preschool named Chloe who is a rival for Connor’s affections, but my niece confidently told me, "I’m going to marry him because I love him the most."
It reminded me of my first kindergarten boyfriend, Donny Tate, who brought me a bouquet of flowers from his yard one spring morning. As I walked into the brick schoolhouse holding my foil-and-damp-paper-towel-wrapped bundle of irises and peonies, my teacher said, "Oh, are those for me?"
I replied as any self-absorbed five-year-old would: "No, they’re for me."
Probably because of the novelty of kindergarten, I remember more things that happened to me during that single year than I do from the six years of elementary school that followed. A lot of those memories involve my own misbehavior and the inevitable consequences.
For example, one day a friend and I decided not to go back to class after recess ended. I can’t remember which one of us had the idea, but it seemed like a good plan to both of us…until we were hustled back into the building by our irate teacher and made to sit on the steps during recess for an entire week thereafter.
By the time I left kindergarten, most of my rule breaking was limited to talking too much. It’s something I could still stand to work on.
I don’t remember anything more about little Donny except the bouquet of flowers. I assume that he ended up at a different elementary school (much as my niece and Connor will be sadly separated next year when kindergarten begins).
That leads to today’s reader question: Who was your very first admirer/crush/boyfriend/girlfriend? Did he or she figure into your later life or disappear in the mists of time?
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