Little Bo Geek

Little Bo Geek
Making my Mark

Being a competent and adept student with a year of Nursery school under my belt I knew that kindergarten would be a snap. I quickly caught on to the ins and outs of school house socialization and became quite the little chatter bug. This did not please the teacher who apparently had a low level of tolerance for chatter and on one particular day I was instructed to put my head down on my desk for what is now referred to as a Dr. Spock inspired “time-out”. This being my first experience of the utmost embarrassment and humiliation I chewed the Peter Pan collar off of my pale pink cotton Salvation Army dress at the Little Bo Peep Pre-School. I was crying and chewing on my collar simultaneously. This was my first successful attempt at multi-tasking.

One winter morning that very same unforgettable year I wobbled out the front door of our modest suburbia home as I did each and every school day morning. This was a particularly frosty winter morning. The kind of frosty morning that stung your skin like the proverbial jelly fish. I stepped out onto the driveway which evidently was a complete layer of merciless ice. Out of the blue my Woolworths rubber fisherman goulashes, the kind you wear over your orthopedic shoes went out from under me and I proceeded to slide all the way down the precipitous drive way on my 5 year old rotund buttocks. I glided all the way down to the bottom at warp speed and landed right in front of the Little Bo Peep school bus full of 5 year old miniature Brocktonians who watched out the windows of the short bus and laughed uncontrollably at the expense of my lily white ice parched tuchas. I ran back up beside the driveway in the snowy front yard not knowing that the back of my dress was now stuck to the top of my tights revealing the underpants marked Tuesday when it was in fact Thursday and ran into the house too embarrassed to get on that ghastly bus. I used the excuse that the freezer burn on my butt would require immediate medical attention from the likes of Dr. Kildare, Marcus Welby M.D. or my favorite heroine, Nurse Nancy and that it would be far too painful for me to submit this derriere to a full day of being one with my school house chair. This childhood nightmare could have been avoided if only the rock salt was on sale that week.