Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Bono?

January 20, 2008 – 9:59 pm |

I don’t have a lot of memories from Kindergarten, but I do have some. I clearly recall that my teacher, Mrs. Farley, a sweater-clad grandmotherly woman with curly red, teased hair, had filled our classroom with personified letter balloons (Mr. M, Lady L and the like). We spent a lot of time learning about Mr. M who made muffins and Lady L who loved lions. We drew shapes. We talked about colors. And, if memory serves me, we devoted a good chunk of my 1/2 day class period to drinking milk and eating a cookie.

The Kindergarten students of today, it seems, receive slightly more advanced instruction.

Friday, 6 came home with a picture he’d colored of “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” Because, as he explained, “Monday is Dr. Junior’s day.”

What a fabulous opportunity, I thought, to take the lesson he’d learned in school and expand. And so I started in on what I thought would be a terrific, age-appropriate Dr. King lesson.

“You’re right,” I explained as all three kids listened intently.

“Martin Luther King taught us all about how important it is to treat people the same.”

I continued to my captive crowd. “He was a very important person in helping to tell people that they shouldn’t judge each other by how they look and that it’s what inside that counts.”

6 looked at me quizzically. “Actually,” he said in a tone of slight annoyance, “there used to be all these laws saying that black people couldn’t do things. And there were a lot of signs everywhere about how only white people could be in restaurants and places like that. But Dr. King got the laws changed.”

“That’s right,” I said, a little speechless as he continued.

“But then he was shot because some people didn’t like him. And do you know where they killed him, mom?”

I paused briefly, and ran the song through my head just to be certain … early morning April 4 … “Memphis?” I responded.

“Yeah, in Tennessee.”

Apparently the academic life has changed a bit in the last nearly 30 years.

“So, who wants cookies and milk?”