Like fish in a tank

My youngest child is now in kindergarten. Every day the left side of his bright blue folder is stuffed with papers reflecting the work he did throughout the day. The right side contains his homework. One page, sometimes two.

While I am beyond impressed at his accomplishments thus far, this is not the Kindergarten I remember.

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Yellow walls. Bright and cheery. I don't really remember having desks. I'm pretty sure we had 3, maybe 4 big tables throughout the room. Each table was a different station. One with pencils, scissors, and paper - the art station. One with blocks and plastic counters - the math station.

Even though my best friend was a year older and in a different school, but I always had someone to play with at school. My teacher was always so nice. The way a Kindergarten teacher should be. Her name escapes me, but I will always remember her pitch black hair with the big curls. Looking back I realize that she was very with the times. Her hair was a typical 80's hair style.

Playing and drawing were so much fun, but what I really looked forward each morning was time with our classroom pet. Our class had a black and white lop-eared bunny. His fur was so soft. He felt just like a cotton ball when I would pet him. His black velvety ears flopped down the side of his head, framing his small face. Many days I wanted to sneak him home to keep for my own.

Sadly our bunny could not stay. He might have died, but I'd prefer to think he went to live with another family. The table that held our bunny cage was soon replaced with the biggest fish tank I had ever seen. My uncle worked in a pet store and was always bringing fish home for me. This tank far surpassed the size of any I had owned!

Inside that tank we had guppies. They were no bigger than my fingernails and would dart to and fro. Soon we learned that we had boy guppies and girl guppies. A small container was hung from the top of the tank. One of the girl guppies was placed inside by our teacher. Soon we had baby fish that were no bigger than a pencil mark.

We later added more fish to our tank, including a Beta. This was my favorite of the fish. His scales were a mix of royal blue and deep, dark red. If you looked just right, it appeared purple. I was not the only child who loved this Beta. Soon we were all asking if our Beta could have a friend. Our tank was big, but our teacher explained that it was not big enough to have two. Betas were grumpy fish. If we tried to give it a friend they would fight all the time. We wanted happy fish.


When reflecting on Kindergarten, I feel like those fish in the tank. I was confined within those soothing yellow walls, but free to move about my space. We were all happy and we were all friends.

Even the Beta.

For this week's RemembeRED prompt, we're asking you to remember kindergarten.