A daycare adventure

    My childhood was traumatic for a number of reasons, too many to get into in one article, so I will start small. One event I remember clearly was day care- now I know what you are thinking- nothing traumatic about day care, we all did it, right? Wrong. Everyone else went to neat little places with neat little names, like Tot Spot, or Head start. The name says it all- Tot Spot- it’s the spot for tots, they even passed right by my house to pick up other kids, in the cool little school bus with the happy kids painted on the side. It even looked like a real school bus, bright yellow with the kids on the side playing, ABC blocks, and 123’s painted on it. I swear I could hear them singing Kumbaya as they were coming up the road, and passing my house, not even slowing down. No, I didn’t go there, I went to this hellish creation of a place called Jack and Jill, yeah, that’s right, and we all know what happened to them. The whole ugly falling down bit, losing the crown- yada yada, etc, etc, and they were painted on the side of the bus, falling down and looking sad. It was an omen of things to come. Oh, and we didn’t have a nice bus either, we had an abomination known as the VW micro-bus. It was noisy, it barely ran, had no heat and smoked horribly. Several times it threatened to leave us stranded on the railroad tracks, which would have been a mercy killing as far as I am concerned. But it would have been horrible to die in that God-awful machine.

  You would think that once we arrived at daycare things would be better, but, sadly not, it was ran by retired concentration camp guards, that all hated children. So, first thing upon arriving we were made to take naps for a while, it depended on the gestapos mood as to how long these naps were to last. Usually until lunch time. Lunch was a joy, they cooked nasty food and covered everything in catsup, or ketchup depending on where you are from. I am a very picky eater, I also didn’t like catsup as a child. So, as punishment for not eating, you guessed it, another nap for me. On the rare occasions that we were allowed into the exercise yard, there was one working swing, several half flat balls, a sand box with no sand, and the joy of all joys- a big wheel. This being the place it was, the big wheel had a worn out tire on the front with a flat spot. So, as you peddled around the concrete compound it went whap, whap, whap, jarring your teeth loose each time the wheel turned. We heard through the grapevine that tot spot actually had new toys, and even balls that held air, we also heard that our toys came off the trash pile when tot spot threw them away. I didn’t stay there long, my appeal went through and I was paroled to a private babysitter that kept kids in her home. That is a whole new story.