FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN BLUES

kin·der·gar·ten

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Origin

mid 19th century: from German, literally ‘children's garden.

I don't know why we can't come up with another name for our first official school class.  No offense to Germans, but after Charlottesville, I keep hearing Kindergarten with over-enunciated Ks, Gs and Ts.  And that last thing I want to think to myself is I'm sending my son somewhere that in any way resembles The Third Reich.  People wonder why Jewish people always come back to the Holocaust, and it's because there's the realization that at any time any country can turn into that.  The Holocaust feels for many like an exception.  It wasn't.  So there's an underlying neurosis in Jewish folks, even the ones that are well off.  But I digress, this isn't going to be a political blog at all today. I've been inspired by an old friend to share something more personal, more intimate.

But nothing like a little Holocaust humor to start a blog.  I mean, it got your attention.  But there's another reason.  You see, yesterday was my first child's orientation for KinderGarTen...SEE there it is again.

As I sat in with the group of other parents, I could feel my chest pounding.  I was getting increasingly overwhelmed, like it was me who was starting school again.  All of the things they were going over, from how pickup/drop-off will be handled, to lunches, to homework, parental involvement, etc.... it had started for me all over again.  I felt nervous not just for my kid.  I felt nervous again for me.  And again, I felt unready.

This was freshman year of high school for me... nearly all over again, without the tears and the complete panic; Panic of a magnitude that I couldn't even control.  The year before my freshman year of 1984-85 I was a confident, even cocky teenager eighth grader... but there were cracks that I didn't see until later.

I spent the majority of my childhood like this!

Were you ever invited over to someone's house for a sleep-over and suddenly you got sick for no reason and had your dad pick you up? I did that one time in eighth grade to a burgeoning friendship, and needless to say, that friendship never blossomed.  I felt so stupid and ashamed when it turned out to be nothing.

I didn't know why I suddenly felt so sick to my stomach, and what that friendship signified to me that made me so nervous, but looking back, now I understand a lot more why.

As I kid, I got sick a lot.  And my parents weren't so understanding most of the time, even though my dad took my throat cultures himself.  I swear I got so good at letting him swab my throat that by the time I was ten I didn't even really gag anymore. I was like, is that all you got?  

In short, I needed sleep or I got sick.  And it happened regularly.  Eventually, I got more nervous about not getting enough sleep, getting sick and hearing about how I was just trying to avoid school, than anything else.  I would have my tonsils removed (finally) at age 20.  That was a separate hell of its own, but it finally solved the problem.

So when I went to that particular sleep-over, and his parents were out on the town, and his friend was over with us, I knew there wasn't going to be a good night's sleep.  How do you explain that to your new friend who is twelve?  You'd look like the nerdy tool you're already afraid you look like anyway.  So I jumped ship. Worrying got the best of me.

In sixth grade, our class went on a bus trip to Niagara Falls and Toronto.  We chartered a bus that took us the whole way up north and it was a long drive.  I was so excited and nervous at the same time.  This was my first school trip.  Like a real overnight trip.  We were staying in hotels.  And I had my first set of headphones to share my best friend's Walkman so we could both listen to tapes.  That was considered cool at the time.  Now, for some reason it became a thing to NOT use the restroom in the back of the bus. And within and hour I had to go.  Remember, this was a charter, so we were racing against time to get up to Niagara and we weren't stopping. So I became the guy who used the bathroom.  And was terrorized for it.  Pretty soon, my mind had me so worried about using the bathroom that I had to go more than usual.  And immediately, I became the uncool guy who actually used the bus bathroom.  I heard about it the rest of the year from some people.

On my eighth grade Washington, D.C. trip, I got chosen to room with the three other coolest guys in my class.  I was a class clown and had attained a sort of notoriety that I actually enjoyed.  Yet, all I could think about was how I wouldn't get any sleep, how I might get sick on the trip or would have other issues.  So I switched rooms to be with someone else I thought I'd still have fun with who wouldn't want to stay up all night.  Naturally, he went and switched into the cool room leaving me with the other two guys.  They were good guys, just not necessarily the "cool" ones at the time.  Can you believe a kid would ever do that?  Take himself OUT of the cool room and put himself elsewhere when the cool room is where anyone would want to be?  Who would do that?

This kid did.

I still can't believe it.

And I'm certain the guys I abandoned who had been really excited about me being in that room really thought I was an idiot, or worse, just figured I didn't like them.  Nothing was further from the truth.

The hardest thing about sharing these things is three-fold:  first they're in the past and might seem silly; second, I have no big tragedy in my background as to why my idyllic life got derailed.  And third, I never wanted to seem like I was writing something that felt like I wanted pity for the things I experienced.

I had really great parents -- not perfect -- but pretty darn great.  I had an older sister -- five years my elder and not easy to deal with, but nothing so unusual.  We had a nice house, in a nice neighborhood, and even got a dog when I was ten. It was the idyllic household if there ever was one.  It seemed perfect.  But it wasn't.

There's only one explanation I have found for what started me on the roller coaster ride that would lead to a breakdown in high school.  It started with my parents loving me too much.  High class problem I know, but it's true.

My parents are the most wonderful people I know, and I may be biased, but I know kids that wanted to come over to my house just to eat with my crazy father.  My dad was and is truly that funny.  My mother was often the perfect straight man and was and is the sweetest woman to overfeed you of all time.  And both of them endured the tragedy of losing a child before I was born.

Devastating.  A complete destruction of all in life that seems safe and good is to have brought a young son into the world that didn't make it to his first birthday.  The kind of complications my brother had were extreme, and might have been correctable at birth today, or they might have aborted it early.... either way, it was so tragic.  My parents didn't speak of it much.

When I was born, they held onto me for dear life, and who could blame them.  And as a child, now looking back, I learned at some point how to manipulate plenty of situations so they would do things for me.  And believe me, they did a lot for me.  Way too much.  It's not surprising they started to question my ailments, because I worked in my share of sick days where I'm certain I could have gone to school.

But really, I am proof that squashing your child and not allowing them to grow really stifles things and creates problems.  Add that in to a lot of different schools (in five years I was in four different schools, including one in Cambridge, England), and you have a lot of instability in friendships combined with a lack of being prepared as to how to cope and handle change.  The cracks widened for me.

By freshman year, starting an all-boys Catholic school from a small Jewish middle school, left me drowning.  On the surface, it seemed like the transition would be easy.....I had two classmates from my eighth grade class going with me and one guy I knew from elementary school.  It would make a natural foursome.  My parents were so certain there was no problems that they went away to Japan my first two weeks of school.  They weren't even close to understanding what was about to happen.

I found myself on my first day of school in my first period Typing Class with one of the Christian Brothers, feeling like my world was collapsing.  It was rather appropriate that it was dark outside, because all I felt inside was that the dark was swallowing me and there was no light to be found, no matter which way I looked.  Not with the guy sitting next to me, not with the teacher, no one would understand why I thought I needed to run and flee right away.  And I couldn't.  I was one of maybe four or five Jews who were lucky enough to be accepted to this academy of higher learning.  I couldn't just run out of class.  By the end of first period, I was breaking into pieces, tears were running down my face and I tried to cover myself up and get to the guidance counselor's office.

If it hadn't been for a gentlemen named Steven Mangan, one of the most wonderful human beings I have ever met, I don't know how I would have made it through.  I didn't even know why I was falling apart.  I had no control over it.  Zero.  Imagine if you will not being able to control when you laugh or smile or frown.  Mr. Mangan didn't care.  He just sat and tried to comfort me, and listened, even though I was beyond embarrassed and now completely frightened. I went home, and though I was relieved to be out of the school situation, I broke down for hours at time.  My grandparents thought I was going crazy.  In between adages of "this should be the best time of your life" or "why should be you so upset?" I became petrified of having to experience another day of this.  The only reason I slept was I was so exhausted from crying all afternoon long, that I had nothing left in me.  I hid in my house as much as possible.

In school, the guys I knew were having a great time.  They loved what high school was offering them.  I don't even remember what I must have been like to be around except to probably complain because it was all I could do to even keep it together.  How could I ever explain any of this?  I didn't even know what was happening myself.

My high school...looks like a Cathedral, doesn't it?

For nearly my entire freshman year I missed my Home Room Class and instead sat with Mr. Mangan so I could make it through the day.  He was like my version of Tuesdays, with Morrie, except it was 9:15 at Mr. Mangan's Office.  I had no chance to try out for the soccer team, my strongest sport by far, I avoided social situations, lost friends and hid in the corner at lunch time with whomever would sit with me and let me be who I was: a frightened kid who had lost complete control inside.  My parents got me some help, but there wasn't any solution to be found. I was too young to comprehend what was going on.  The only thing my dad made me promise was to at least make it through the year.  If I could do that, I could transfer out if I thought that would make a difference.  I did make it through. I persevered, even though I made almost zero friends.  I had lost a lot of self-confidence, so the idea of switching schools and starting the nightmare all over again wasn't a choice.  Dad didn't like the idea of quitting anything.  So I didn't.

I think it was my senior year, I remember being outside during gym playing Ultimate Frisbee with my class, and I was killing it.  I threw several touchdowns and dove for one catch on another.  And I remember hearing, "Look at Phillips, man, he's good."  It killed me inside.  I had always been a decent athlete.  Not gifted, but good enough to letter in something.  I had lost three years of my life.  As an added bonus, I didn't start growing until my junior year.  By the time I was a senior, I was six feet tall and still going.  And no one knew anything about me.

At the time of my 10 year graduation anniversary, I received an invitation to my upcoming reunion for the Class of '87.  Except I'm Class of '88 -- that's how unknown I was.

You know, being told you're really smart and you're going to do great things can be a gift.  But it's also a curse.  Expectations were always very high, especially after I rarely cracked a book open all through elementary school.  And hardly through middle school. By the time I started struggling in every way imaginable in high school, I didn't get a lot of support.  My parents thought I just wasn't trying or was being lazy.

The good news is that my high school taught me how to work harder and work through my distracted personality.  I went on to have a much healthier and happier existence in college though I still was plagued by panic attacks.  Panic disorder has been a lifelong battle.  There has been little solace in it.  For those who don't have it, there's no way to explain it.  All the way up into my thirties I would occasionally suffer a major attack, sometimes in the middle of sleeping.  I would wake up with a racing heart, sweats and an inability to breathe correctly, like I had suddenly forgotten how.  Or the oxygen I was breathing wasn't filling my lungs.

Then, finally, late in my 30's, I was diagnosed ADHD after reading the book Driven to Distraction.  On the list of like the thirty-two symptoms that make up attention deficit disorder, I had experienced about twenty-six of them.  Crazy insane that it took so long to figure so much out about myself.  And no one had ever proffered the idea. I was angry, but I think it also finally brought some relief.  ADHD people often go from breezing through school to struggling.  They often can't focus and fight depression and worry.  They also can hyper-focus when it's something that really grabs their attention.  It can manifest itself in many, many ways.  I urge parents to read that book if you think your child has similar things going on, no matter the age.

I am proud to say I didn't let it stop or defeat me.  I have tried many things most people consider terrifying and succeeded at them in a way that was useful to me -- I moved by myself across the country without knowing another soul at first.  I studied at Second City LA and performed improv and stand-up.  I wrote and submitted scripts and gained agency and managerial representation.  And I've been published as a fantasy sports writer and now a storyteller.  I am working on my first novel.

But where this is really going is my son.  Today, my son is heading to school, and I felt a return of those feelings all over again. He's a worrier, like me and his mom.  He takes a little while to warm up to things.  He does very well with a schedule.  And I worry that he'll go through what I did.

Will I love him too much?  That's a silly question.  I already do.

Is this a genetic thing and will it strike him like it did me?  Or is it a combination of many things that add up to the big picture?  

My hope is that by sharing this maybe I've not put it out into the ether so that school will be for him be the beginning of a marvelous journey.  That hopefully the lessons I've learned from coping with some of these things will allow me to assist him should any of these happen for him.  Or maybe this will give other parents some feeling that it will all be OK in the end, even if it isn't easy.  Maybe this too, will explain some things to all those friends who were puzzled by my behavior.

Today is his first day of Kindergarten.  I'm as excited and nervous for him as a daddy can be.  I'm quite certain though that only his daddy has the Kindergarten Blues.