A Preschool Commencement, or Why Certificates Aren't So Bad

This afternoon, something momentous happened. You all, you four and five year olds, many with faces already sullied with cake frosting and outfits chosen haphazardly by your frantic parents or by your colorblind selves, reached the first milestone in life accompanied by a certificate. Hundreds more certificates will eventually join the one from preschool in a manila folder in your parents’ basement. Much in your life will be recognized by a piece of paper that looks slightly fancier than any other piece of paper, as if your accomplishments are as fragile and cheap as that which is purchased by the ream and cut into scratch paper quarters when one side is used up. Perhaps your swimming lesson certificates and perfect attendance certificates and most improved player or kicker or runner or singer or dancer certificates will meet such a fate, but not your preschool certificate. That one will be worth holding on to, should you ever need to remember your preschool teacher’s name.

A preschooler, with certificate

Forgive me if I sound cynical. There are those who make fun of preschool graduation, saying this event does not deserve recognition. Is tying your shoes a less significant feat than conquering differential calculus? Not to you. Are the social pressures of the preschool classroom, when Maddie won’t play with you even though you told her to three times, and when Mason grabbed the dump truck when he could clearly see that you also wanted the dump truck, any less difficult to navigate than the cliques that await you in high school? I’ve seen the tears Maddie and Mason caused, and they are just as real as those that accompany getting stood up for prom. You probably will not remember the trials and pain that accompanied your preschool career. But that does not mean they did not exist.

Another preschooler,
with certificate

Maybe those who feel you do not deserve a certificate and a picnic and a little mock mortarboard hat have a point. Maybe your accomplishments are too mundane to warrant recognition. Those people probably feel the same way about the participation ribbons, runner-up trophies, and sportsmanship medals that will one day adorn your bedroom shelves. Recognizing everyone tarnishes the value of the first place award. Recognizing everyone fosters mediocrity and denies students, athletes, and competitors lessons on the importance of hard work. Awarding participation over achievement is the reason we have so many pudgy C-students distending their parents’ couch cushions with hours upon hours of television and selfish, slovenly napping.

The actual ribbon

To those people, and to you, recent preschool graduates, I have a story. After my family moved to a new city in 4^th grade, without the social connections that keep ten-year-olds active and fit, I turned into one of those pudgy kids. Tortilla chips and microwave Cheez-Whiz were my recreational equipment. And then in high school, after five years of pathetic self-esteem and social isolation, I joined the track team. I was terrible. I wheezed like an old man and sweated like a toilet tank on a hot day. And then, one meet, the second guy in the second-ranked relay team was sick, and I was asked to run. My team compensated for my pathetic performance, and I earned an eighth place ribbon. I was more proud of that than almost anything else I had done.

So, new kindergartners, the future class of 2028, I urge you to ignore those that would deny you this celebration. We all want and expect recognition. No one complains about compulsory yearly raises, obligatory birthday gifts, or thank yous from the boss for simply meeting expectations. No one feels his or her efforts belittled by a pat on the back. So, with that certificate, you join the ranks of humanity, all of whom expect compensation for their work and appreciative gestures from their spouses and families when they clean the garage or paint the deck or go to the gym, not like a champion, but just once. Just because many, most, even all will do what you just did, you still accomplished something, with finger paint and Elmer’s glue and snack time graham crackers.

Certificates still mean something with misspelled names

Try to not ruin that certificate with your greasy hands, even though you will receive plenty more. It may be your first of many, but the spot it holds at the bottom of the pile, in the back of that manila folder, is a place purchased with tears, and laughter, and stories about farm animals, and hazy memories, and glitter. Oh, so much glitter.

Congratulations. Now let’s go. It’s bedtime.

Who said snow? I didn't say snow.

The humidity is high today, which means my old classroom achieves this fascinating smell, a mix of body spray and sixty-year-old varnish and tater tots. It's an acquired taste.

I would NEVER commit the sin of speaking of winter before summer even starts, but I had this idea in February and first had the opportunity to finish it now. If today's humidity makes you shudder at the oppressive heat of summer to come, then here's a little bit of snowy refreshment. If you, like the reptiles and cactuses, love the furnace we are about to enter, here's a reminder of what we just left behind, to help you appreciate the impending temperatures all the more.

Hopes of Skating

My kids are seven and five, so they don’t know any better.

Sledding at Mitscher, 2013

I like to take them sledding at Mitscher Park, the neighborhood park just a block south of our house. There’s no technical sledding hill in the acre-ish field. It is essentially a big divot in the middle of the grid of houses south of Hamilton Avenue, west of Rudolph Road, and east of State Street. Whoever teased roads out of the woods and farm fields apparently could not stop himself from adding a few creative flourishes, abandoning strict parallel lines for the occasional trapezoid or, when the spirit took him, a little curlicue of asphalt leading to a quiet cul-de-sac.  However irregular the streets are, the whole area drains to Mitscher Park, which, in the case of Biblical rains or climate change monsoons, will keep all of our houses from floating away. And it has a slide and a swing-set. Win-win.

Mitscher Park used to have a skating rink, too, back when I loved Mitscher Park. When I was eleven, if time allowed after dinner on cold winter evenings, I could throw my ice skates over my shoulder and walk down and spend a half hour by myself gliding across the ice. That was freedom on at least three different levels. Freedom from my parents, freedom to do what I wanted, and freedom from the friction of rubber soles on the sidewalk. During the summer I would bike down for the Parks and Rec summer program, where one of the employees got all the boys in the neighborhood addicted to baseball cards. He sold me a Jose Canseco rookie card, and I have never checked, but I assume it is now worth a ton.

Sledding at Mitscher, 2014

Somewhere between when I moved out of my parents’ house, and then bought that house from them fifteen years later, the city stopped flooding the rink at Mitscher Park. When I take my kids there to sled down the modest slope in front of the abandoned warming house, ours are usually the only tracks in the snow. Last winter, a toppled early-season snowman kept watch over the former rink, covered by each successive snowfall until it was just a boulder in a field. The playground equipment on the other side of the park sees a little more winter traffic. The monkey bars are tough in mittens, and the snow does not leave enough leg clearance to swing, but snowpants in the tube slide are almost as fast as the hockey players used to be out on the ice.

My kids and I always start the outing by filling the sleds with snow and dumping them out on the concrete pad in front of the warming house, which makes a launch so they can build up speed before they hit the small hill. I try to point them at one compacted track when I shove them toward the drop, but they are terrible at steering, so soon the hill is a braid of paths. After a while, my arms get tired, and they are slower to get up when they bail at the bottom, so I wander around the warming house and look in the windows at the benches where I used to sit and put on my skates. I wish I could smell it again, that special mix of hot rubber floor mats and melted snow and old wood. I imagine most warming houses smell the same, but I’d still like to check Mitscher’s for myself.

On the walk home I imagine myself someday going around to all the neighbors’ houses to put together some sort of neighborhood association, or take up a collection, or at least get them to sign a petition to reopen the Mitscher Park skating rink. There are lots of kids in the neighborhood all of sudden, with lots of hockey nets in driveways. I know Putnam Heights is only couple miles away, but eleven-year olds can’t walk that far, certainly not on school nights.

Sledding at Mitscher, 2015

My wife makes hot chocolate for my kids whenever we return from sledding at Mitscher Park, just like my mom used to for me. My wife even keeps the tin of Swiss Miss in the same place my mom used to. If I am going to attempt some community organization to reopen the Mitscher Park rink, I’d better do it soon. By the time they’re twelve, maybe thirteen, tops, my kids won’t care about skating. That’s about when I stopped. I would hate for the city to put in all that time and money if no one appreciates it.

There’s always been an ebb and flow of kids in my neighborhood. The nights of some years are louder than others with the sounds of ghosts in graveyard and impromptu soccer and hockey games. I’m sure someone would appreciate the rink. I know I would.