The Great Kindergarten Escape

In the spring of 1953, I participated in the “Great Kindergarten Escape.” Besides me, two other friends, Scott Nield and Roger Cazier, were also involved.

I don’t remember who came up with the idea, but I do remember that the entire class was on a bathroom break before we were supposed to lie down to take our naps.

Because we were the first ones back to the classroom and the teacher was not there, we were emboldened to do something brave (or dumb depending how a person looks at it). We came up with the idea to climb out the window and go home, thus pulling off the “great escape”. This event became a classic in our family lore.

The three of us all lived on the road known as Nield String. Roger and I lived approximately one mile from the school and Scott lived a little further down the road. This whole episode was fun, except Roger and I made a strategically awkward error in judgement. We got home way too early, so our mothers made us turn around and walk back to school.

Being obedient sons, we did what we were told and walked back to the school. We took our time and got there just as the afternoon session started.

Not wanting to waste a good walk, and being somewhat adventurous, we decided that we might as well enjoy the afternoon session and raise a little havoc. So, we started tormenting the teacher and her students by pulling faces at them through the classroom windows. After a few minutes we decided that wasn’t exciting enough, so we knocked on the windows and whatever else we thought we thought we could get away with just to make sure we got their attention and distracted the class.

Obviously, the teacher was not going to put up with this disruptive behavior, so, using hand gestures, she tried to scare us away. It didn’t work. 

We kept it up until her patience was exhausted. We could see the anger on her face as she came outside to try and catch us, but we easily slipped away. After she went back in, we started our game all over again. This was not our teacher, so we felt empowered to give her a rough time and found it exciting to have her yell at us and try catching us.

I don’t remember why we decided to quit this adventure, but we did. We thought we got away with something grand and laughed all the way home. We didn’t stop to think that while the teacher probably didn’t know our names, there was a high probability that she knew our fathers who were both born and raised in that small town.

I’m pretty sure our parents never knew about our afternoon adventure because I am certain that had they known we would have been disciplined and taken to apologize to the teacher.

Today I can appreciate that our moms were correct in sending us back to school. They set a good example of gentle yet firm discipline. There was one key ingredient missing though: follow through!

Without follow through, we created even more trouble and demonstrated that at that moment we were not trustworthy. But that’s not the end of the story. Over time, both of our moms were able to instill a sense of integrity and respect for others we did not display that day.

Learning life’s lessons takes time and patience. Thanks parents for sticking with it and teaching your kids how to grow up into decent human beings one crazy day at a time, no matter what harebrained ideas they come up with. 

Happy Failing Forward,

Calvert