I was excited to be in "real school" finally. I still remember that I couldn't pronounce my teacher's name, Mrs. Pockras. I kept calling her Mrs. Potroast for the longest time. My parents thought it was cute, but Mrs. Pockras brought it up one day.

"But I did say Mrs. Potroast!" Yes, indeed I did.

Kindergarten was my first real look into the intricacies of bullying. There was a little girl in my class named Kristine, who for some reason decided the second she looked at me that she did NOT like me. She became almost instantly violent and tormented me endlessly for months, until finally, unable to understand why we couldn't just be friends already, I drew a picture of myself and Kristine holding hands, with "We love each other" written across the top. I gave it to her at school the next day and told her that we should be friends, because God and our Mommies wouldn't like it if they knew that we were fighting all the time. It worked, for the record. For the rest of the year, Kristine and I got along. We weren't best friends or anything, but apparently Kristine had gone home in tears and told her mother exactly what had been going on, showed her the picture, and asked how she could make it all better.

As far as actual schooling went, some parts were wonderful and others were not so wonderful. Every morning, in order to practice writing our names, we would make letter out of play-doh and spell our names on a mat. I had trouble making the M. I couldn't get it to work...Mrs. Pockras eventually showed me how and I got it from then on. But it took a long time.

I could be slow picking things up. One day, we were told "Write your name on the top of you paper." The little boy sitting across from me looked up and asked me "How do you spell 'your name'?" He was being sarcastic, but I dind't pick up on it, and started spelling out M-I-C-H...The teacher yelled at the little boy for writing my name instead of his. He thought he was literally writing "Your Name" as a joke. Oops.

We had a program at our school called "Buddy Readers" which was when the fifth grade students would come and read with us for a set amount of time every Friday. The first week of Buddy Readers, my Buddy brought a little book that I took one look at, said no, it's too easy, and pulled out the book I wanted to read instead. The difference between my book and my buddy's book was only about three grade levels and fifty words per page. We got through the first chapter together, nearly flawlessly.

Kindergarten was honestly my best year at Atwater Elementary School. I enjoyed myself, though I found the work to be less than inspiring most of the time.

Already I was showing an interest in being around older students, rather than with children my own age. I tried to associate with the older kids and learn what they knew, and a lot of the time I ended up playing by myself at recess because the older students had left me to have time away from the little kids, and the kids my own age didn't want anything to do with me.

I was just beginning to write on my own when it came to anything other than my name. I didn't always have to look at a letter chart to know how to form letters, but it still helped a lot if I had something to look towards. Most of the time I preferred to express myself in pictures.

I was talkative, leaning towards outgoing, and overall a happy child. But that was soon to change...