jfc mrs kaufman
April 22nd, 2023 @ 6:55 pm
my mother came down to see my sister’s friend’s new baby earlier today, and we were talking about day care and the one i went to as a child (from ages 5-11). this one lady who worked there used to TORTURE me. she hated me… she would call me by my last name, she was so nasty to me, she’d ask the kids who wanted PB&J or cream cheese & jelly sandwiches and would always force me to eat the CC&J (i hate cream cheese), etc. – she was just awful. anyways, we got to talking about the actual owner who was the opposite of that fucking beast and my mom told me about a story from either 1988 or 1989 that i DO NOT remember at all.
i have such good long term memory, that i remember things from ages 1.5/2 on. to prove it to my mom one year, i drew out the floor plans of our apartment from when i was ages 1-3 and i was right… but i digress. for me to forget something from childhood is really weird. i remember so many things and in crazy detail, but i guess this one was traumatizing for me.
picture it: college point, queens, a frigid winter storm. a smol stu, age 8, is waiting for her day care to pick her up, but they aint comin’ bc of the weather holding them up. apparently, my 3rd grade teacher lived on long island and decided she no longer wanted to wait for my day care (or anyone) to come get me AND LET ME WALK HOME ALONE, IN A BAD SNOW STORM.
my mom was telling me she got a phone call from school to her job asking if i was in school that day. they couldn’t find me. they said day care never picked me up and she started freaking out bc nobody could find me.
my daycare finally called my mother to let her know that they were held up bc of the weather, and by the time they got to my school, i had already been released by my idiot teacher, but they didn’t know that. they searched the entire school for me to no avail. they found my teacher and she told them she sent me home bc i said i knew where i lived.
sure, my apartment was 5 blocks away… but I WAS FUCKING EIGHT YEARS OLD. i also had no keys.
my daycare lady (the nice one) drove down to my house and found me sitting outside with my back to the front door, hysterical crying. 🙁
my poor sister and i were almost in tears thinking about how i walked home in a snow storm alone at that age. if you know me irl, you will know that i am smol. when i was in elementary school, i was always the peanut at the front of the line in size order… it’s so sad to think about tiny me battling wind and snow going down a hill alone, probably scared shitless.
* * *
i can’t remember that situation AT ALL. i don’t know if i suppressed that memory or what. i can barely remember anything from that year, tbh. i can remember all other years – various times during the years. i really can not remember anything from the year i was in 3rd grade, other than we moved to college point. this was also the same year that my mother moved us out of the bronx and left all of my toys behind (like EVERY 80s toy i ever had). i must have been so traumatized by that, that i just blocked out that year.
poor, smol stu. 🙁
p.s.: my mother tried to have that old cranky hoe fired, but she was tenured. my mother was told she was “spoken to” about it, lol. …fucking flake.