Kindergarten

The speaker reminisces about their time in kindergarten, particularly their friendship with a boy named Peter Nuttall. They both refused to eat in the cafeteria and were given home-cooked meals. However, Peter had to stay back in kindergarten while the speaker moved on to first grade. Years later, the speaker googles Peter Nuttall but does not find much information about him. They imagine Peter living a happy life in Australia. My academic career started at Montessori School. At the time we were living in Paris and it was a really wonderful place, a tiny school in the suburb of Paris. I remember somersaulting into my coat and taking care of rabbits. I remember the sweater I wore that my mom had brought me from London. It was white with a big red apple on it. No one commented on how lovely it was and I truly felt special wearing it. No one else had a red apple sweater and life was very, very good for one year. The following year I was sent to kindergarten. The teacher was disappointingly plain, her haircut was sensible, and her clothes were from some kind of catalog, if I had to guess it would have been Montgomery Ward. They were plaid, plaid and polyester, and they were stupid. She wore bell-bottom polyester plaid pants and a long plaid vest to match it. It was an affront to my senses and I didn't understand how she even existed in Paris. She was nothing like Mrs. Collins, our librarian. Mrs. Collins had a British accent and a small Yorkie named Lucy who sat under the circulation desk. Mrs. Collins knew all about Paddington Bear and the Fabulous Five and she was far more interesting and clever than my teacher. In time I would learn that Mrs. Collins also had a keen eye for plagiarism. It was in the third grade when she was teaching us about research. It only took her a couple moments to realize that my report on giraffes had been copied verbatim from Britannica. Kindergarten didn't have any rabbits. We had a plain teacher and the food was atrocious. Every day we were marched across the parking lot of our American school to the cafeteria of the French school. The cafeteria was full of beet salad and god-awful smells. For some reason, at least once or twice a week, one of the French children, a middle schooler, would vomit. Then a woman in a little cotton cap and blue dress would magically appear with a bucket full of sawdust. She would scurry out, throw the sawdust all over the vomit, and then scurry off. No one ever actually cleaned up the mess during lunch, so we would sit there at a long table staring at our beet and smelling French vomit. What I didn't realize at the time is that this was the beginning of a beautiful gift. You see, I made it very clear to my teacher, to my mom, and to all the French school children that I would no longer eat under those circumstances. I staged a protest. I refused to lift my fork, no matter what the meal. I would not back down. The teachers became concerned. My mother referred to me as la revolucionaria. Apparently, I had used this tactic when we vacationed in Austria and Mallorca. Waiters in both countries fell all over themselves, trying to cajole me into eating. I had refused all food except bread, butter, and water. Other parents were becoming concerned, too, as their children refused to eat in the vomitorium they referred to as a cafeteria. Then one parent, clearly the parent of an oldest child, proposed a solution. As a parent, I've learned that rarely do second and third children get the parental advocacy that the first one does. Anyhow, this parent was sure that six of us weren't eating because it was such a hard transition to be in a new school. The six had sat in silent solidarity, and now we had our demands met. We were talking and sharing stories. The best part was that stupid Sherry Tabassi wasn't there. Sherry Tabassi is the girl who told me the first day of kindergarten that there is no Santa Claus. Anyhow, I'm almost over it. Instead, I had two wonderful new friends, Leslie Kress, who was Canadian and owned a guinea pig, and Peter Nuttall, who was Australian and always looked like he'd been chased by a bear. He had his own level of dishevelment. His beautiful strawberry blonde hair was always a mess, and his wide-wailed cords didn't like to stay up. But he was my friend, and for three weeks we enjoyed meals prepared just for us. Doting parents asked about every aspect of our meal. One dad was a real, live, actual French chef. He prepared bananas foster just for Peter and I, and honestly, under those conditions, it would be a challenge for anyone not to fall in love. I adored Peter. He was a model kindergartner. He loved to share, at least with me. Each day he would greet me with his favorite crayon when I came to school. This is blue, Pilar, my favorite color, and you are my favorite person. Then he would snap the crayon in half and give one half to me. The perfect gift for coloring side by side. The year went on, and he taught me all about koalas and kangaroos. I, in turn, told him about hedgehogs and the tortoise in my garden that hibernated and that we fed raw hamburger meat in the spring when it woke up. That tortoise's name was Karne Cruz. We eventually graduated from home-cooked coddled school back to the cafeteria with the rest of the class, where Peter and I promptly restarted our hunger strike. We were no fools, and we loved bananas foster. The mothers and the teachers were terrified we might convince other kindergartners to join our cause, so Peter and I were once again given a full home-cooked meal experience. We would stay behind in class, and a parent would come in and prepare lunch table-side, right there in the classroom. They would ask us all about our mornings and our feelings. The whole thing was lovely. I think our favorite meal of the second increment was the salad niçoise. The year went on, and Peter and I had a wonderful time talking and coloring, but before we knew it, it was spring. Our teacher had started to say things like, I'm so proud of you. I noticed when you walked to gym today, you carried yourself with first-graders. She would also read us stories and talk about how glorious first grade was, because we would be tracing letters, and before year's end, writing our own stories. It all seemed very, very exciting. Mrs. Leveroni's class even had a hamster, and we could take it home on weekends. It was all just too good to be true. One morning in June, when our desks were all clean, and all of our projects had been taken home, Peter met me at the classroom door, as was his custom. But today was different, and I knew it before he spoke. Hello, Pilar. Hi, Peter. He didn't say anything, and he wasn't holding out a crayon for me. Today he held out a beautiful paper fan. It was very ornate, and it looked like it had been hand-painted, covered with graceful golden cranes. Pilar, I can't go with you. I didn't understand. Go where, Peter? Where? Peter looked shyly at the ground, first grade. He didn't say anything else. He didn't say this was his favorite fan. He didn't say I was his favorite person. We stood there for a good amount of time, dumbstruck and staring at each other. How could this possibly be true? Then, Peter, still looking at me, took the beautiful fan and ripped it in half. He handed me half and said, take this with you and don't forget me. It had all been too good to be true, and I went on to first grade while Peter stayed in kindergarten. At my sister's urging, I googled Peter Nuttall, some 40 years later. She convinced me that he was a genius who developed more slowly than other children. I was in kindergarten 48 years ago. The ripping of the fan was our, here's looking at you, kid moment. It never occurred to me to see what became of Peter Nuttall, the Australian. So before recording this story, I googled Peter Nuttall. There's a Peter Nuttall, the successful entrepreneur in Perth, but he graduated four years before me. There's a Peter Nuttall, the hotel manager in Perth. This makes sense, given his early love of hospitality and cuisine. There's a Peter Nuttall, reigning Australian squash champion, but he's only 21. There are two Peter Nuttall authors, The Guitarist's Way and How to Manage Stress, are the books they've written. And in terms of what Peter might have written, I think those titles are about a horse apiece. Finally, there's a Dr. Peter Nuttall, head of sustainable sea transport research. And for some reason, this one rings true. I won't dig any deeper. I won't try to contact him. I'm happy to imagine that somewhere in Australia, there sits a nice man in a comfortable chair with a lovely dog at his feet. And across from him on the mantle are pictures of happy moments with his wife and children. And nestled among those pictures is a beautifully framed, slightly faded half fan.