by Vickie Marcy

Created on: March 06, 2009

As I walked to school holding tight to my mother's hand, I could hardly contain my excitement. I was going to school finally, that meant I was really a big girl now! I got to go to kindergarten for the morning class, and right after Christmas, I'd be going to the afternoon class. My teacher was an older woman, short, white hair and stocky; I fell in love with her that day. She was the kindest person I had ever known, and she loved kids. She didn't talk down to us, she spoke to us as if we were good friends who stopped by to say hi. Before the year was over, she would suffer a parent's worst nightmare before saving another parent from the nightmare she was still going through.

The school was about a hundred years old, it was dark, chilly and had big square registers in the middle of the hallways and classrooms. The first and second floors weren't too bad, but the basement was really scary; the basement was where kindergarten was located, as well as the restrooms for all of the school kids. I loved kindergarten and the kids in my class and especially my teacher. She walked us down the old basement corridors to the restrooms and waited for us to finish.

I was never afraid of the basement, but the restrooms were a different story. I can still see the long row of stalls on the right of the narrow corridor and the single stark lightbulb that hung from the center of the corridor. It didn't shed much light, so you couldn't really see what was in the stall with you, and that in itself was a blessing in disguise. I thought I saw something big and hairy in the corner of the stall one day while I was sitting on the toilet; I would have made an Olympic Scout proud as I sped down the corridor past my teacher and ran into our classroom.

By the time our teacher caught up to me, I was sitting at my desk, underpanties still not pullled up all the way. I was too young at the time to be embarrassed, I was just glad to be back in the classroom and away from the restroom stalls. After that day, I never went to the bathroom at school again until I was in the second grade. My bladder was ready to burst when I finally got home from school each day, but I didn't care. I would have wet my pants before I went back into the scary restrooms; I had heard several other kids talking about the things they had seen lurking in the stall corners and that was the end of using the schools restrooms for me for a couple of years.

Before I knew it, autumn arrived bringing cooler days and chilly nights.

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