The First Girl

A Crisis in Kindergarten (memoir)

Photo by Nero Hameed on Unsplash

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There were two girls I recall, mainly, from life before high school. More than two, actually, but only two which made a difference in my young life. Let me tell you about the pivotal moment with the first.

She went to St. Paul’s, the Episcopalian K-8 private school I attended in Ventura, California, a 100,000-population coastal town bisected by Highway 101 and about 90 miles north of LA.

Though I attended school in Ventura and I’d been born in that town, in 1991, when I was eight, we moved 12 miles inland of Ventura to the small white wealthy enclave of Ojai, once home of Krishnamurti and still home of expensive private schools like Thatcher and Villanova, the latter of which I’d later attend for high school between 1999-2002.

Five days a week my father would drive me the 20 minutes from Ojai to Ventura along Highways 33 and then 101, dropping me off at school. He’d then head towards Port Hueneme Navy Base where he worked as an independent contractor as a computer engineer focusing on ballistic missile systems. Around 3pm each day my mom would pick me up and we’d head back to Ojai.

The first girl was named Anne Griffin.

She was a fellow student in Kindergarten. It was a small, expensive parochial school so it’s not totally shocking that I still recall her full name and exactly how she looked…but it’s still a little surprising. She was redheaded, with thick curly auburn hair, pale-skinned and had many freckles on her face, as if Jackson Pollack had flecked freckles all over her skin with a chaotic brush.

I remember the cold in winter, and the largeness of the school campus, and the whole school (only about 200 kids) standing shivering around the flagpole on winter mornings, the sun beaming just barely above the local mountains, we all cultlike chanting in unison the Pledge of Allegiance, sun glinting in our eyes, hands against our shoulders, like Orwell’s little children.

Anne Griffin had this habit of chasing the boys around. The idea was: She chased; we ran. You never wanted to be caught, god forbid, for obvious reasons: Girls had cooties. Remember: This was Kindergarten. She often chased but never seem to actually catch. Looking back now I wonder if this was more of a nonverbal understanding, agreement, symbolic contract, even, wherein she agreed to chase but not actually catch, and the boys agreed to run and always remain elusive.

When the boys discussed Anne it was in grotesque terms: Not about her body or anything like that—we were little children, remember—but in terms of cooties and a sort of inherently grasped notion of “coolness” even if we didn’t then have the language; to be caught was to be “uncool.”

The problem was: I wanted, secretly, to be caught. I couldn’t explain why, even to myself. (I certainly never expressed this externally.) From my vantage point now I know that I was, for whatever reason, highly sexualized from a very young age. I remember thinking about “sex” (or what I vaguely understood to be “sex”) as young as perhaps four or five. There’d always been a Freudian kind of semi-conscious push/pull between me and my mother. She spoiled me badly and yet I also felt emotionally neglected by her for complex reasons I won’t go into here. But there was something about my mom, ergo something about girls, females, women, that drew me, attracted me, pulled me in like a laser beam. Not overtly sexually, not at that point…but something perhaps a layer or two prior to overt sexuality. A deep core desire.

Anne had chased me a few times before in the recent past and I’d done my duty of running away unscathed. Legend—myth—was that if Anne actually did catch you she’d kiss you on the lips. Again, the boys all dialogued about this as being a disgusting, even reprehensible act, something they desperately needed to reject, revolt against, run away from. I acted the part to belong…but secretly I wanted to be kissed by Anne Griffin.

One day Anne was chasing boys around. It was a late winter morning, just after The Pledge of Allegiance. We had a brief recess just before we had to gather in the classroom. We played in an area which was in a long, wide gray asphalt oval which you could run around; between the oval was a jungle gym, monkey bars, sand, slides, etc.

I was walking around the oval this particular morning, minding my own business, when suddenly I heard the other boys yelling something at me. I looked behind me over my shoulder and sure enough: There was Anne, running towards me with a harsh gleam burning in her soft blue eyes. She smiled malevolently. Her dress was typical: Black with red roses stitched on it and little white frills at the collar. She looked like the quintessential American school kid of the late 1980s.

There was only one choice, of course: I ran. She gave chase.

Round and round we flew, me being chased, hunted down like a lion pursuing a gazelle (or something like that). Sometimes she switched tactics and went the opposite way, or she’d suddenly leap onto the middle section and run across the sandy belly of the jungle gym trying to cut me off at the other side.

I always elided her grasp.

By now the whole class was watching. Something new and different had occurred. Usually Anne sort of frolicked around, picking boys at random to chase, and she’d move from one boy to the next. But this time she was spending all her time and energy solely on me. I remember feeling both excited, honored, terrified and worried. How would this make me look to others? Was this good or bad? What would I do if she actually caught up to me? What was fair to do to girls physically, as a boy?

These questions collided into my mind along with my fast-beating heart, my racing adrenaline, the flush of blood to my cheeks, my breath coming out quick, making me pant.

Round and round we went, the noise of the class shouting for me to run, some of the girls shouting for her to cut me off here, chase me there, turn around, retreat, etc. I didn’t know what Chess was back then but now, thinking of the experience, I realize we were playing some kind of physical, nonverbal Chess game. All of my being was electrified and alive in that moment. The cold winter morning now felt good as I expended so much energy; the low sun warmed my goose-bumped skin. It was a game, and I wanted to win, even though I didn’t know what “winning” even meant.

Then, through the shouting and the chaos and the running and the sweat and the cold air now refreshing and the physical movement and now building exhaustion, I heard the bell ring indicating that recess was over and it was time to finally gather in the classroom. But I was in another realm. It felt like I’d walked through a new door, a portal, a fifth dimension, into some original, totally unknown land. Recess faded into the background; it didn’t matter. The shouting student didn’t matter. Even the teachers seemed unimportant to me now.

As the shouting continued, I spied some students turning their backs and heading towards the classroom. Slowly, kids were filing out, going away. Panting, my cheeks wildly flushed, when I looked behind me I saw Anne still giving chase, her blue eyes more determined than ever. I knew then that she was in the same psychological state as me: Gone to the “real world” and existing in some other form. We’d somehow broken from space and time and were in a different universe.

Instinctively, I slowed down a little. There were still perhaps ten boys and a couple girls shouting loudly at us. It was all a delirious sonic background. When I leapt off the asphalt jumping for the central sand of the jungle gym yet again, this time I knew what to do. It had to be done. It was the instinctive, inevitable final maneuver.

I pretended to trip, falling hard onto the sand. I remember the cool feeling of the soft sand against my arms and legs and cheek and I remember the slight taste of sand on my tongue and against my lips and I remember feeling everyone’s eyes on me and I remember feeling an intense joy about the attention, the drama. Being already even then a dramatic, sensitive, deep boy, I relished in the dramatic, climactic, intense experience of “falling hard” in front of the others.

As I started (intentionally slowly) to stand up (which probably looked inauthentic and dramatic as well; I could have been an actor instead of a writer), Anne plowed into me, gloriously, insanely, her warm flushed freckled face blurring into mine, our shadows mixing, our bodies dangerously tangling, and I went down again. She landed on top of me, facing me, me on my back on the sand. She pinned my wrists down and I pretended to not be strong enough to break free. She smiled, intended it to be a sort of “evil” smile, and leaning down, her butt wriggling on top of my hips, she quickly planted a kiss right on my lips. Very fast, very quick and very easy.

When our lips touched I felt a kind of inner ecstasy; not sexual, mind you, but spiritual, almost religious. It changed something fundamental within me and I somehow intrinsically knew that nothing would ever be the same again. It was as if the great Heavens above parted and, just for one singular moment, God showed his face. I had seen The Light. I had witnessed God’s love.

Giggling, Anne quickly jumped off me. I laid there on the sand for a minute. Everyone, I suddenly realized, was gone. I was alone in the totalizing silence: It was only me out there, on my back on the cool sand still, just gazing at the blue sky and the rising sun. A smile formed on my face. I felt saved.

Then our teacher appeared, Mrs. Gold, with her long blue dress and her thin silver necklace swinging around her neck, the pendent making a slight thumbing sound against her collarbone as she walked.

“Michael?” she half-shouted. “Are you ok?”

I did not answer. I slowly got up, brushed the sand off my clothes, and moved towards the class.