Being First in Line … Not Anymore!

Being first in line is not that important.  Believe me.  I learned that in kindergarten.

We were all gathered around the piano in Miss Eucke’s kindergarten class.  It was one of my favorite parts of the day.  The wood floor was warm from the sun that had been shining in for most of the day.  I sat “pretzel leg” facing the teacher and the black piano, singing and smiling.  But then I began wiggling.  “No, no,” I told myself.  “You can wait.  You don’t want to miss singing time, do you?”  The wiggling turned to rocking.  We sang another song.  Oh, how I loved the way the piano sounded and the way we all sounded as we sang together.  Miss Eucke had told me several times what a nice voice I had.  I simply couldn’t walk away from singing time.  The rocking continued, but nobody thought much of it.  It looked like I was just really into the music.

But then the rocking stopped.  I couldn’t hold it any longer.  A puddle grew underneath my dress.

At almost that same exact time, the teacher announced that it was time for recess.  We all jumped up and headed for the door.  After only two steps away from the piano, Miss Eucke spotted the puddle.

“Boys and girls.  Stop please.  It looks like someone should have used the restroom while we were singing.  Whoever it was who wet their pants, please come here.”

No one moved.  My heart was beating very fast.  I was so embarrassed.  I didn’t want  Miss Eucke to know I had done it.  Why hadn’t she sang just one song less?  But I didn’t really want that either because I loved that last song.  It’s the reason this happened.  Miss Eucke asked again for someone to admit it and step forward.  No one did.

“Well, boys and girls, there’s another way to find out who did this.  Everyone go to the cloak room and line up.”  I was fascinated and couldn’t imagine what she was going to do.

Now here’s where I made the biggest blunder of my young life (to that point).  I raced to the cloak room with everyone else in that innate drive that all school children seem to possess to be first in line.  And I succeeded.  Miss Eucke followed us in and announced that she was going to check one at a time to see who had wet underwear.  All she had to do was lift my dress in the back.

Well, as you can guess, my guilt was discovered right away.  Everyone else was excused to recess.  Nobody was really mad that I had done what I had done, just a bit disappointed that I made everyone else late for recess.  I don’t really remember what happened after that … whether my mom was called or what.  What I do know is that ever since that day I never rush to be first in line.

3 thoughts on “Being First in Line … Not Anymore!

  1. All I can think of is how mortifying! I would have died, too bad she didn’t figure out another way to call attention to wet pants. You deserve to be first always with writing like this ;). I loved the story, very well written.

  2. I am so happy you didn’t think of this as negative when you were in Kindergarten…you were a strong little girl.

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