Nineteen Seventy-six

Brenda kindergarten 1974
Originally uploaded by Tokyorosa

My mother's note says it was 1974, but that's a misprint. I was born in 1971 and I was five in this photo and you do the math, okay?

I was five and I was in kindergarten and this was my school photo. I was smiling this way because my front teeth were missing and I didn't want a gap-toothed smile to be evident. I think someone must have teased me about it beforehand because I was very careful to smile with my lips closed.

I think this dress was a hand-me-down, but I don't know that for sure. I know I didn't like it very much. The "shirt" was not really a shirt but was a set of sleeves and a collar sewn to the scratchy, rust-colored polyester dress. My favorite thing about the dress was that the sleeves were too long, which I loved. The other thing I loved about this outfit was the barrette I was wearing in my hair. It was made of blue seed beads sewn onto tan suede in an Indian design.

My hair was the often bane of my existence then. It was quite long and sometimes having it combed out was a painful event. A few months after this, it was to be cut short, very short, after it matted up while I was sick and in bed for a long period of time.

I actually remember a lot about kindergarten. I really loved one of my teachers, a buck-toothed, olive-skinned woman named Paula. (Was it Paula?) We used to play dodge-ball in the tiny courtyard, and there was this one girl whose mother used to have to come to retrieve her on a regular basis because she used to bite the other kids. We had nap time on those thin mats and I remember laying awake in the darkened classroom and I remember waking up in the darkened classroom. We had storytime and we finger painted and we sang and played music.

Ah, youth.