QotD: Kindgergarten Rules of Wisdom

What did you learn in kindergarten that you wish you did a better job of applying to the way you live your life today?

Share the red pencil.

When I was in kindergarten, we all sat at round tables, about 5 or 6 kids to each. Our room had about 6 of those round tables, with little plastic blue or orange chairs, a cubby section in the corner where we'd put our jackets and lunch boxes, a couple of play areas where you could paint on pads attached to clunky easels, or play house with the girls, or build forts out of big wooden blocks with the boys. The teacher had one of those standard grey metal teacher-desks, the kind where you could hide beneath it and no one could find you, and the carpet was a lovely shade of industrial indoor-outdoor school green. We did half-days in kindergarten, and I had the morning session. For some reason, I was late coming into class the first day, and my mom dropped me off to a classroom full of kids already seated, and I did the Long Walk to my blue plastic chair under the feral glare of a bunch of 5-year-olds I didn't know. It was horrifying. I think I covered my ears.

Whether it was my fashionable lateness, or my un-fashionable homemade sweater-vest, I'll never know, but the kids at my table had it out for me since day one. The boys scowled at me, the girls pretended I wasn't there. I had no previous experience dealing with Other Kids, and I had no idea what the proper response was to pretty much anything they'd do. I was fine with the teacher, for the most part, except for trying to understand where her attention to me fell in her agenda of dealing with an entire classroom of kids.

One of her dubious teaching methods was to give each table a red pencil. We all wrote with stubby, thick black-painted pencils with no erasers, but one pencil at each table was coated with red enamel paint. They were the most sought-after objects in our carpeted world, those pencils (other than the wond'rously sharp and shiny lefty scissors) and every day, the pencil would rotate around the table to the next person in turn. It made one feel really special, to grasp that sanguine-hued writing implement in one's chubby little fingers, and hold it aloft for all to see. It made life worth living, and knowing that today was going to be your Red-Pencil Day made the sun shine a little brighter, the birds sing a little sweeter.

Until, that is, they skipped you.

"Ah, pardon me," the lad says to the girl to his right, "but I do believe it is my turn to wield the red pencil today. For you see, yesterday Ricky here had it, and since the progression has traditionally moved counter-clockwise around our little round table here that would logically place me as the next-in-line. So if you would, I'd like the pencil you are now holding. Tomorrow it shall be yours in turn." He holds his own typical black pencil forth, awaiting the trade.

"Ha ha. Shut up." She sneers.

"Excuse me?"  The boy looks incredulously around the table, meeting the bemused eyes of his classmates...they know! They all know....it's a conspiracy! It wasn't an honest mistake at all, they had purposely skipped him! He can't believe the audacity of it. "But....it's MY turn!"

"No it's not. It's mine." The girl says pointedly, daring a claim to the contrary. To which the 5-year-old lout to the boy's left side responds crassly, "We skipped you."

The rest of the day was a bleary-eyed haze to the boy, who had just been taught a cruel lesson of How The World Works. Sometimes people don't like you, and aren't afraid to let it be known. It doesn't matter if there's a reason behind it or not. If you aren't liked, all rules of society are forfeit. You won't get preferential treatment, you won't be chosen for any Teams, you'll very likely find yourself the subject of Uncomfortable Confrontations, you may become the butt of private snickers, you'll have issues with anxiety during much of your waking hours, you'll never build up any of the confidences that will allow you to attract members of the opposite sex and chances are you'll be either home alone or volunteering to work on the nights of your school's various social events.

And you definitely won't be using that red pencil.

So, whether you're 5, 15 or 55, remember to include others in a sincere, fair manner. Those are the Rules. Even if their mom makes them wear homemade sweater-vests. Share that red pencil. Tomorrow it'll be your turn. It will make for more well-adjusted people in this world, and that's just better for everyone.