Storying the Self #2- Kindergarten
Kindergarten. This is when my worldview changed. Up until this point, my understanding was that everybody looked like my Mom, my Dad, and me. Everybody had white skin, a loving home, and fun days full of adventures. During my first week of kindergarten this all changed, and my goodness did it change drastically. I remember my Mom and Dad helping me get ready for school and dropping me off for the first day. I remember stepping into the vibrant classroom. Walls covered in bright bulletin board spreads and learning posters of all sorts. There was a large carpeted area accompanied by shelves of books. This place looked like it was going to be fun!
With excitement in the air, my new classmates began to file in with their parents one by one. Finding their lockers and hanging up their backpacks just like I did. I had two classmates that caught my eye specifically. They were both girls with curly brown hair and very dark skin. Skin much darker than mine. They talked the same as me. They wrote and colored the same as me. But they looked different then me. This puzzled me. I had never seen someone my age, my height, and my gender have dark skin. This was going to require some extra observation and thought.
These two girls seemed to be with each other all of the time while we were at kindergarten. At center time, they went to the same center. At carpet time, they sat next to each other. They even showed up to school and left at the same time as each other. Their Mom even looked like them. She had black hair, brown eyes, and very dark skin. This was very interesting. I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t think it was bad that they had a different color of skin. It was just how their skin was. They were such nice girls and I liked having them as my classmates.
As I made my way through my elementary days, I later grasped the concept of last names. I gained a greater understanding of race. And it began to dawn on me that these two girls were absolutely, one-hundred percent, not sisters. They had different families and different cultural backgrounds. My perception of them being sisters was a completely incorrect assumption. It was an assumption I would have never made about classmates with white skin who were best friends and showed up to school together. So why did I jump to this conclusion about the two African American girls in my class?
About The Author
Taylor Bubnick
In my spare time I enjoy going to the gym, working on a new drill or skill at the soccer field, and spending time with friends and family.
The beginning of this story had me drawing connections to my childhood as well. You never realize that there are other types of skin colour or home situations as a young child until you get to school, where you meet all kinds of people. I feel that you playing with the concept of shorter and longer sentences added detail to the story. Aswell, ending your story with a question is clever and a good way to finish off with the reader still intrigued. Overall, this was a well done story!
I love the innocence that you had as a child. I for sure would have thought something similar. We had an African American family move to my elementary school form the states. Children assumed they were from Africa and couldn’t speak English, and everyone knew that the children were all siblings. Black families didn’t come to our rural town and this was huge. Everybody had questions about where they came from and what it was like back home. Considering home was something like Missouri – not exciting.
Were there many clues pointing to them not being siblings that you hadn’t noticed then but you do now?
Great story, Taylor. The ending is what I really enjoyed. I feel like at that age, I would have made the same assumption. I think the reason I would have made that assumption is just because I had such little exposure to seeing people that weren’t the same skin colour as me. When I was in kindergarten, I probably could count on one hand how many people of colour I had seen up to that point. You did a great job of guiding us through the story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!