First,
in the morning, Ms. Aoki plays music from the boom box. “Who would like to create a movement with
your arms from this music? Hiro, please
come up to the front and show your movement.
Everyone, let’s copy Hiro’s movement.”
Hiro holds his arms up in the air and swings them. All of our arms are up in the air and swung
from right to left, like the wind. Ms.
Aoki is smiling, satisfied. After that,
Ms. Aoki decides who should lead the next movement. Of course, my hand is so
straight and high. My fingers are so
straight that they are almost arching out the other way. Unfortunately, the person chosen is not
me. Ayumi holds her arms up in the air,
and swings from right to left. All of
our hands are once again held in the air, and swung from right to left like the
wind. “I know something different,” I
blurt out with my arched hand. “I need
someone who is quiet when raising their hand,” Ms. Aoki says while avoiding my
begging eye contact. The next person is
up. Hideki holds his arms up in the air
and start swaying. “Are you nuts?” My
heart screams. I am totally tired of
holding my arms up in the air and swaying.
Looking
around, quite a few hopeful “I-wanna-go-next” straight hands and “Pick-me!” eye
beams are somewhat ferociously shooting at Ms. Aoki. Finally her eyes meet with mine. Her beautiful smile makes me extremely
hopeful. “Ok, that’s enough for today. Let’s do this next time.” Are you kidding me? Ms. Aoki, you will regret it if you don’t see
my special arm movement in your music! This disappointment in Ms. Aoki would haunt me
on and off through my entire pre-kindergarten career. Does she underestimate me? Does she expect that I will do the same
stupid movement? Ms. Aoki is the person
who knows me the best, maybe even better than my parents. Nobody could copy my completely complicated
movement. Perhaps she is afraid of what
might have happened if she picked me. Earlier
experiences of betrayal, disbelief, and realization of “Life is Not Fair” have
been appropriately yet painfully seeped into my veins. Facing the reality is quite shocking and
hurtful on my developing body and mind.
However,
it seems like that day turned out not so bad.
A rigorously constructed clay snake and a couple of apples are showing
off on the wooden clay board. Rich is
making bananas on hers, while I wonder why as I keep rolling a snake as long as
it can get, my snake gets longer and longer, and skinnier. Maybe I can make the longest snake
record. I carefully roll one side, and
hold it for a second, and roll the other side so I don’t break the snake. It becomes longer than my clay board. I grin.
My snake could be eligible to be a noodle. The most fun part is coming up. I am going to coil it up around and around
and make my clay typhoon roll. I am
almost there. When my snake is just
about to reach the world record length, Rich pushes her desk by accident. Bang! “Sorry!” As Rich blurts out, my longest possible snake
becomes “one” still-sort-of-long snake and “one” miserably short snake. Instantly, my dream breaks into pieces. With my frustration, I decide to put two
snakes together to make a hideous ugly rock which nobody makes.
“Raise
your hand if you make some animals?” Ms.
Aoki asks. Someone shows her a mediocre snake
proudly. “Wow, I have never seen such a
long snake before!” Ms. Aoki
exclaims. That snake is not even half as
long as mine. I am about to show my
world longest snake and realize that I instead have a horrifically ugly
boulder. Unfortunately, I totally ruined
the only proof of the world record longest snake. It ends up being an unrecognizable humongous
boulder. It is very pathetic that I am so
close to get the whole spotlight, yet I am not quite close enough. Maybe I have to wait for my spotlight moment
until the school bus ride home.
We
take off our art smocks and hook them up.
My penmanship notebook is ready on my desk. I am anxious to open my notebook because I
just couldn’t make the Hiragana letter “Ne” very well last time. I erased it several times, tried more than 10
more times, and then time was up.
Nervously, I turn my pages to get to the “Ne” page. I can easily find the page that is crumpled from
being erased a million times. To my
surprise, my “Ne” letter box is filled with red ink marked by Ms. Aoki. Not once, but over and over and over. It is clear evidence of her agony over the simple
letter “Ne”. I am so confused about
which line she means for me to trace. Soon
my eyes catch the brand new red ink letter “Ne” outside of the box. Her accomplishment finally appears. She finally wrote her best “Ne” after several
struggles in my practice box. Thanking
her effort, I consciously trace Ms. Aoki’s accomplished “Ne”. Then, I do mine just like hers outside of the
box although I know she is not going to look at this page any more.
Ms.
Aoki always wears a greyish dark blue smock along with the fellow lady
teachers. Mr. Principal always wears a
well ironed white shirt and a tie without a jacket. He shaves his head every day because his other
job is as a monk in his temple. This means
he must wear “Kesa” for funerals, burial services, and other temple related activities. It is kind of like Superman or Spiderman’s
life. Nobody knows the other half of his
secret life. Technically, my pre-kindergarten
is a small private Buddhist school where its temple becomes the convenient assembly
hall.
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