Obama Girls Head to a New School. Oh the Memories of that Dreaded First Day.

I hope the girls do well and are able to be just what thier parents hoped/ Normal but possibly over achiving I know the Obama's expect good educations for thier kids and the school they are going to be in is a good one. The Friends as the schools leaders are called, are worthy and kind people,I hope they are happy in Washington it can be a scary and hard place at times.

My tiny nuclear Jewish family -- Mom, Dad, Grandma and I -- moved away from family, friends and familiar places in Chicago to a very small town in northern Wisconsin. It was Feb., 1939. I was 7, a 2nd grader, but in the hustle and bustle of settling in, Mom hadn't enrolled me in school yet. I was playing with an ancient sled outside the store my father had been hired to manage. The snowdrifts towered high above my head. Suddenly, I was surrounded by "big" boys -- actually 7th & 8th graders -- newly dismissed from the parochial school on the hill. They were all shouting at me using language I instinctively knew wasn't the kind of language one used in polite society, each epithet accompanied by the word 'Jew'. Of course I knew I was Jewish, but I'd never before been confronted with being "different." I was scared, but I was also stubborn. I refused cry and I refused to run. I later learned that because I neither cried nor ran, ganging up on a small girl wasn't fun anymore and the boys left me alone, still standing on the snowy sidewalk, the sled rope tightly gripped in my mittened hand. Only then did I run crying for comfort to my Grandma. The population of the town & surrounding area was largely 1st & 2nd generation German. When WW2 began, many families sent their sons to seminaries to keep them out of the service. I caught the brunt of the rampant antisemitism from the kids; their parents were polite as could be to my parents, both of whom could speak, read & write fluent German, because they carried merchandise that wasn't available in other local stores because my father travelled far and wide to get it. However, how they spoke of us at home was demonstrated by how the kids taunted me. I spent 11 years in that town, leaving when I went away to school. I haven't been back since, tho I still am in contact with 2 former classmates. I hope Malia & Sasha will have much happier memories of their first days in their new schools.

Bad memories stay with a child forever -
even when one becomes an adult.

Children do echo what they hear at home.
I wonder if those parents of those boys from Nanameow's story knew what their kids were saying, and did it make them proud when said aloud?
I wonder if those boys remember saying those hateful words?

I always believed what goes around - comes around - the good and the bad.

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Good luck to Malia and Sasha in their new school. I know they'll do well.

Oh do I remember. I was only 4 when I started first grade. I was not put in kindergarten due to my reading skills. I should have been in kindergarten. The first day, parents could stay and sit in the back of the room. I wanted so badly to do well. I was so scared. I had no idea how to ask to go to the bathroom. I had an accident as a result. I can still see the puddle in my minds eye. Oh my. It tells me though that sometimes even the small things are important to know.

I went to first grade 48 years ago in a new town, where my father had taken his first teaching job. My teacher was SO mean to her little first graders. I remember being so afraid of her...my Mother came to get me (like an avenging angel) after school one day when I was made to stay after for some slight. She refused to let us go to bathroom until children would wet themselves. I would cry every morning before going to school.

Valerie, we must have had the same first grade teacher. Anyway, she was a nun, and not a very nice one.
She actually made fun of kids.
What a nut! I still remember it after all these years.
I forgave her, but I still remember.