One day, while in Kindergarten in Santa Venetia, during show-and-tell time, Jan, the girl who sat across from me at my table, brought in a souvenir from Disneyland- one of those caps with the huge feather that stuck out of it. She loved that thing and was happy to share it with us. She had brought it back from a family trip. It was special for her. The only time I had been to Disneyland was when I was too young to have any real memory of it. I was still in a stroller. I do think I remember eating this sweet watery stuff. I think it was one of the first times I had eaten watermelon. Anyway, here was a person who had just been there. I sort of liked that feather cap, too. Maybe I could get one if I ever went back to Disneyland. After show-and-tell, a guy named Robert took a pair of scissors we must have been using for some arts-and-crafts project and cut that feather into shreds. This upset Jan greatly, which upset me too.
The teacher must not have thought it was such a big deal. I do not remember her asking who had done it. It was just a bit more of a disruption than she wanted to deal with, or maybe she saw who had done it and decided not to press it just now. Well, I decided to do something about it. I kicked at him under the table. He made a big commotion about being attacked. No one else said a word. We were all sitting there like angels. The teacher evidently had had enough of Robert causing trouble that day, so she took him to the principal’s office.
Ten years in the future, Jan’s memory of this event would be the key to her knowing I was not just another high school jerk trying to pick her up. But that is another story. There is another girl who had my interest at that time. Gale. There were always girls I had little crushes on over the years, but she was the first, until much later, who had a pet name for me. It was “Boo Boo.” OK, no need to laugh. We were only 5. I think I had it bad for her. What did age matter? I knew when I was hung up on someone. I did not know why I was interested, just that I was.
Before I get too far along, nothing ever came of this other than being a playground “romance.” She may not have been as aware of the impact she had on me as I was of hers, but we will never know what might have been. After that school year ended, my family moved to San Rafael. Currently, Santa Venetia is part of San Rafael, and students can be bused between the two. Back then, we might as well have been moving to another country. I never saw her again, or Jan for that matter. Of course, sometimes you can never say “never.” In high school, I met up with Jan again, and a bit after that, I found out what had happened to Gale.
In my freshman math class, I sat behind a girl I met originally when I moved to San Rafael in the first grade. Her initial claim to fame for putting her in this writing is that I got in trouble once for helping her cheat on a make-up test of some kind. Laurie was nice, but not the best of students- in the third grade anyway. She had been out sick and had missed a test. She was scared, she wasn’t ready, and for some reason, I agreed to show her my already-graded test paper so she could check her answers. Yeah, right. Suddenly, she was a lot smarter than usual, and I was the one on the hook.
She was not quite devious enough to miss her usual amount on the test, so she would not raise suspicion. Plus, she was done and handed in her test way too fast. Needless to say, she was caught, and she quickly pointed out her accomplice. My teacher was shocked that I would do something like this. I promised to never do it again. It was the first time, and would not be the last, that I went out on a limb to help a lady in trouble. I never helped her again, though.
Back to high school math. Sitting across from Laurie was a girl named Jan. They seemed to be friends. People made friends quickly back then. All it took was seeing the same face a few times in different classes, and you had a friend for life. So, Laurie and Jan were friends, at least since two classes earlier. Of course, I had known Laurie long enough to have a history with her, and I knew that Jan was from somewhere else. She had not been in my school before- not Junior High anyway, but I knew there was something about her that seemed familiar. Then, she gave me the clue. Or maybe Laurie did, I do not remember. The clue was that she lived in Santa Venetia. The school district had just decided to allow Santa Venetia kids to go to San Rafael schools if they wanted to. Could there be another Jan my age from there?
That night, I went to my collection of school class pictures and found my kindergarten class. There she was. The next day, I mentioned to her that I thought she seemed familiar. I think she must have heard that one before. She thought I was trying a line on her. (Even back then, I could have done better than that.) No, I mean it, were you in John MacPhail School in 1959? She said she had been, but she still did not remember me. The next day, I brought in the class picture and pointed her out. She then recognized my picture and realized I was not just a bad pick-up artist. We really had gone to a different school together. In our remembering things about “then,” we remembered the feather incident. We have been friends ever since.
Catching up with Gale was not such a happy experience. In our reminiscences, I had asked Jan if she knew what had happened to a girl named Gale from our class. Jan told me that Gale was in an accident around second grade and had a pretty tough time for a while. She did not know where she was currently. I was to find out more about her when I was a junior.
I was a school photographer and was in demand from time to time to photograph non-school events. One of those events was the installation of a new “Faith” in the Rainbow Girls. I had no idea then, and still do not know anything about any of that, but not knowing the event you are taking pictures of does not stop you from taking the pictures. Of course, as I found out, I could not view or take pictures of the event itself, but I could take pictures in the lobby of those involved before the event.
The “Faith” of this ceremony was that same Gale from kindergarten, who had called me by a pet name, and made me hate my parents for a short time for moving me away from her. She was almost as I remembered, just older. But there was something that I could tell was still not right about her, although it was hard to pinpoint. And she had no idea who I was. I think she briefly thought I was trying to pick her up, just as Jan had initially. But once I mentioned having been in her kindergarten class, she smiled at me and said she was very sorry, but she could not remember anything that far back. Her accident had been severe enough that she had never regained her memory of anything that preceded it. I told her I was sorry it had happened to her, and I was glad she was OK now, and I took pictures of her and her other Rainbow Girls. This time, at least, I was able to say goodbye, and, as it turned out, I never saw her again after that. On the bright side, I was paid to take the pictures- and I did not even have to process them. They were in color anyway, and I only knew how to do black-and-white. I wish I had a copy of one, though. It would allow her to have aged in my memory. To me, she will always be that 5-year-old girl in kindergarten who I chased on the playground and jungle gym, and who called me Boo Boo.
Memory is the Key 