False Starts

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Tell us about your first day at something — school, work, as a parent, etc.

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I was four. Which, in hindsight, explains a lot.

There had been no preschool. No gradual introduction to groups or routines or puzzles on low tables. My entire social world consisted of Robert, who lived three doors down. Robert was six months younger than me and we did everything together. Everything except school. That should probably have been a clue.

My father took me on the first day. I remember looking around the room. Children were sitting at tables, happily absorbed in toys and puzzles. To my four-year-old, mildly contrarian mind, this did not look like learning. It looked like mind control. I decided immediately that I would not be participating.

I stood still. The adults tried encouragement. Nothing. The stand-off dragged on. Eventually the headmistress decided to take charge of the moment by taking hold of my arm and dragging me into the room. I kicked her in the shins. That was the day I entered family folklore.

The next two years were a blur of confusion and resistance. I refused to cooperate, though I often wasn’t sure what I was refusing. I was sent to the headmistress regularly. Most of the time I had no idea what I had done wrong.

Then one day I was sent again — only this time it was because I had done something right. I didn’t know what that was either. When asked why I was there, I said, as plainly and honestly as I could, I think I’ve done something right.

That seemed to satisfy her and things began to improve after that.

Years later, reading my parents’ memoirs, I discovered that this wasn’t entirely my own invention.

My mother also started school at four. She refused to be separated. She wriggled and wailed and pulled like a fish on a line. In the end, she won. She went home. Her parents were told to bring her back when she was five. Which was the age she should have gone in the first place.

My father’s beginning was different. One morning his mother announced they were going for a “nice walk.” It ended at the local public school. He gave it a go. Lasted the day. But on the way home, a large black dog hurled itself at a front fence with enough force to make a permanent impression. That was enough. School was over. There were no conversations, no explanations, no return visits. Just a quiet agreement that it wasn’t happening.

So perhaps my first day wasn’t a failure. Perhaps it was an inheritance.

Three children. Three false starts. Three people sent somewhere they weren’t ready to be.

Mine became folklore because of one well-placed kick. The others were tucked away and forgotten until decades later, when I stumbled across them in memoirs and realised we had been rehearsing the same thing all along.

Some families pass down recipes. Some pass down stories. Ours, it seems, passes down false starts.