Kindergarten - Decider of Fate

My second earliest memory is my mother taking me to my first day of school - kindergarten to be exact. I vividly recall walking up the 15 or so steps of McKinley School(k-6). It was built in the early 1900-s & named after President McKinley. It was the typical old style school building of red brick with gray shale, high slanted roof. It was 2 floors high, with part of the basement used as a gym & auditorium. On either side of the building was a dirt/gravel playground which had only dirt/gravel & nothing else. There was a boy's side entrance & a girl's side entrance. It was a small, square building, but loomed large to me at my age of 5.

As I entered the building with my mother I could smell the freshness of paint & varnish mixed with the oldness of wood. It was a new smell to me & seemed to make the building official. I loved the smell.

I recall going into the main office, then to the kindergarten class & meeting the teacher. That's about it for kindergarten, because I was only in kindergarten for 2 weeks.

They had me take a test to see if I would stay in kindergarter or be put straight into 1st grade. I vaguely recall taking the test. It consisted of questions like which is the big cat & circle it, What color is the yellow ball & circle it, which is the circle & circle it.

Apparantly I passed with flying colors, because I was ushered into 1st grade.

But that is not the point of this post. The point is how one's life can change, depending upon staying in kindergarten or being moved to 1st grade.

If I had failed the test & stayed in kindergarten for the year I would have had a whole different set of friends through my school years than what I had. My intellectual & emotional development may have been different. My experiences & adventures with them would have been different than what I did have with the friends I grew up with. I would not have been part of the 1st 8th grade graduating class in the brand new Franklin School. My entry into the real world at barely 17 would instead have been a barely 18. I would not have become good friends in high school with Bruce & hang out at his house all the time. And I would never have met his younger sister. And I would never have married her like I did & would never have had the daughter I did.

A lot of things would have been different - all for the sake of skipping kindergarten.

But then, that's the way it is with every moment, isn't it? At a corner, a walk to the right takes you to a new love, a walk to the left takes you into the grill of a large bus. Every moment is like that.

Some people believe in the infinite permutation of events in a persons life - meaning that every possible outcome is going on in a person's life. One permutation takes you to the right & love while at the same time another permutation takes you to the left & the bus, while yet other infinite permutations takes you to every other possibility. You in this plan of existence are only aware of this plane of existence, naturally. Infinite permutations of me have it a lot worse, but then, infinite permutations of me have it a lot better.

I wonder if I should have played dumb on that test?