First Day of School
The first day of school has the biggest impact on the way a person will eventually turn out in the future. If, on your first day, you look “cool” and people see you as cool, then you’ll be popular, but if you start off your day by crying and vomiting, then people will avoid you no matter how nice or generous you are to them. Why crying you ask? Crying because this isn’t any first day of school. It’s the first day of kindergarten.
In the end of summer 1992, I got into the small enclosed room of a new and unknown world that my mother called school. On first arrival, I was scared to see children my age with their parents. I lived on a street where most of my neighbours were relatively older people. I only had a friend that was near my age and we played together all the time, but sadly, he wasn’t in St-Lawrence with me. Now, standing with my mother just like the rest of the kids, I saw some parents leave. They left their children there to play. My mother looked at me and said “I’m going to go now. I will be back before you have to leave. Don’t worry everyone is very nice here.” and gave me a peck on the cheek. I looked at her with big eyes and a confused glare, wondering “Why are all of us here at school?” She slowly walked away, turning back a few times to check if I started to mingle with the other kids. I stood still and looked around the room. None of the children were playing. They were only trying to keep their parents from leaving them. I observed one of the children who started to cry and turn red in the face. He yelled and pounded on his father’s legs. I saw a table with crayons and paper and I just walked towards it and stood beside the miniscule seat watching to see if anyone was going to stop me from drawing. No one came so I took a seat, a piece of paper and of course the green coloring pencil just like the one that I had at home. When other kids saw me already hard at work with my drawing that appeared to look like a vortex, they came and sat down with me. Even that child who was hitting his father saw me and decided that school wasn’t as bad as he thought.
Since that day, I made a lot of friends with whom I still talk to. For example, Justin who was the father-pounding kid and Emily the sweet little innocent girl of my class. Every couple years or so, we have a reunion to see how everybody is doing and if they changed. I like going and seeing them, mostly to remind them of how we all were in kindergarten and of course to see if they remember me. They usually do and tell me: “You’re the guy that liked to draw.”