Well, kindergarten was not what I thought it was going to be. Monday through Friday, I was up at 6:30 a.m. and got dressed and combed my hair. I had the worst “white boy” straight hair in all of Baltimore. After breakfast at home (which is a chapter in itself) with my mom yelling, “Time to get up you little bastards,” with a cig hanging from her mouth and an over-hard egg hanging from the spatula, Jimmy and I would walk down the power lines to school. A bus came at the corner of Cliffwood Road and Kenwood Avenue, but we walked down the power lines and beat the bus.

After Mrs. Loveless checked all 27 of us in, we had to pick which activity we would do that day. Our choices were: housekeeping, which all the girls loved because you pretended to be moms and keep house (Interesting); arts/crafts, where all of the talented kids glued and cut paper out; and big blocks. All of the boys ran trucks and built blocks. More interesting… Well, little did I know that I was the first boy to play housekeeping. All of the girls dressed dolls and hang curtains up to decorate their homes. NOT ME.

Every morning I went to the kitchen and put on my “Mother’s Best” apron and cooked a pretend lunch and bagged it up. After a couple of days, I got bored and thought of a cute way to spice things up. SURPRISE!

One Monday morning, I went to housekeeping, put my apron on and made my pretend lunch. I bagged it up and also put a six pack of empty, used (but washed) bottles of Black Label beer. When packed, I handed them over to “George Washington”, kissed him on the lips and said, “Have a great day. Be home for supper by 6.” Well, I did this for two or three weeks and no one said a thing. Mrs. Loveless never questioned the empty beer bottles in the cooler, nor did she or any other kid say anything when I kissed George Washington, a heavy set black boy, goodbye.

The first week of November, Mrs. Rhodes, the Vice President of Elmwood Elementary, was supervising our Kindergarten class when I handed George the six of Black Label and lunch box and kissed him goodbye. Mrs. Rhodes stood up and screamed, “Mrs. Loveless, bring that boy from the girls’ department and bring him to my office!.”

Well, hells bells. My parents were called into the school. Keep in mind that Betty missed Mrs. Chancellor and her martini glass and my dad had to come to school with grease all over him—he was a mechanic at the time. Mrs. Loveless very calmly explained that I had excelled in reading and vocabulary, did average in math, but that my behavior was unacceptable. She then said that I brought beer into school and kissed George Washington.

Well, Betty sat and said, “I washed the beer bottles out and they were for pretend playing.” Mrs. Rhodes said, “What about your 5-year-old boy kissing another boy, a black boy, George Washington?” Betty unbuttoned her “pokey book” and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and said, “Holy shit!” Mrs. Rhodes choked and my dad left, saying out the side of his mouth, “I need a frickin’ beer.” We got home and mom said, “No fricking kissing boys.” I got it. Oh, really I did not get it until 6 years later.

Oh, what a story that is.