HAGANAMLAS

Everything we needed to know we learned in kindergarten, but in my case, preschool. I loved going to preschool. We got to play outside, eat snack, play board games, spend time around other kids our own age, what wasn't there to like? Well, there was one thing, and we'll get to that.

My school was an old brick building, very typical for the East Coast of the United States in Washington D.C., and it was a couple stories high, maybe even three. It had a specific smell and the floors were shiny, polished granite or marble. It was somewhat drab and dark, come to think of it. Outside, it had an enclosed playground with the types of things kids like to play on or in, like a sandbox, swings, and monkey bars as we called them back then. There was a shed in the playground. We'd sneak back behind it during a game of hide and seek and whisper bad words that we knew, sharing them back and forth and giggling at one another.

Like many of us, I have memories from that time in my life, some lucid, some more vague. I'll never forget the first time I broke my arm. It was playtime and I was going to swing. I started at the bottom, kicked off strong, and pumped my legs‚ pumping and pumping, harder and harder until I couldn't get any higher. I was going to go big and jump from as high as I could get. Can you see me? I'm going to fly. Ready, set, go! Blast off!

Uh oh. As I left the swing, a girl ran right in front of me and clipped my legs as I let go to jump. The next thing I know, splat! After splatting, I remember being held by one of the teachers, and someone kept saying, "He's in shock." I think they meant me, because I could see a bone sticking out of my left arm, just above my wrist, a few inches from my palm. Back then, casts were made of plaster, and I had several. A cast! Something I would have many more of in my adult life.

Did a broken arm slow me down? Certainly not. Would it ever? Not a chance!

Every day during preschool, we were to have a nap. I did not want to nap, I was not tired and didn't like taking naps. This was the one thing I didn't like about preschool, but it would teach me a valuable lesson that would guide me for the rest of my life.

You see, when it was nap time, the ladies would prop an old black and white television on a small table. While we were all supposed to be taking naps, they'd watch soap operas. They'd watch shows titled Days of Our Lives, All My Children, and As the World Turns, to name a few and they were mesmerized by them. I was too, but for opposite reasons. I, for the life of me, could not understand what was wrong with all the people that would show up on that television set. At the time, it was very confusing, and being only three or four years old, it all appeared to be real to me. All the people on the shows were real people, and I could not tell otherwise‚ and did not know, that they were actors. I thought it was all real and that was how they lived. And quite frankly, they all looked very unhappy & miserable.

Every nap time, they'd place that television on that table and fuss with the antennas until they got a clear picture. Then the crying, arguing, suspense, and sheer seriousness of it all would come right through that screen to my eyeballs and my small brain. I really thought it was all true and couldn't understand why someone in their right mind would want to watch people argue and complain and fight and cry all over each other!

So in my little brain, a thought manifested, and it set the course and direction for the rest of my life. I knew it then as I know it now. It's really quite simple, this was my thought:

"All of those people's problems would go away if they would just go outside and play."

That’s it! It was true to me then, and it’s true to me now. I know we grow into having responsibilities and relationships can sometimes feel like the dramas written into soap operas. But that principle remains true to me and more now than ever. When you go outside and play, all your troubles all your troubles fade away. Try it sometime.

- AGAH ABD | NITB

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