When I was four years old we lived in a little brown clapboard house in Eagle Rock sandwiched between an apartment on the corner and the Eagle Rock Elementary two doors up. My dad was a young lawyer just starting out, and my stay-at-home mom was pregnant with my brother, Danny.

My mother had given up a scholarship to a prestigious music school to marry my dad, but she hadn’t given up her ambition. I don’t remember her cuddling or reading to me, although she must have. All I remember is her singing, not songs, but scales. She practiced scales by the hour, making each note perfect, while she did the dishes, set the table, made the beds, dusted our little living room.

Every day I would sneak out of the house and run up the street past the little Spanish bungalow next door until I came to the school. My heart would beat faster as I passed the imposing edifice, stairs ascending to a shadowed portico flanked by towering columns. The building seemed huge, awe inspiring and a bit frightening, and I would hurry past, my destination the white-washed kindergarten building at the far end of the fenced playground. Day after day I would stand, my face pressed against the chain link, waiting for the children to come out and play. Suddenly I would feel a bruising grip on my arm and my mother would swing me around, scold me soundly and drag me whimpering back home. Though tall for my age, I was only four and didn’t belong in kindergarten.

Perhaps because of my height the teacher thought I was older, or maybe she just took pity on me. At any rate, one day she suggested to my mother that I might give kindergarten a try.

The room was long and bright with sunshine pouring from high windows. I vaguely remember graham cracker and apple juice snacks and squirming on a colored mat while the teacher read us a story. But what I remember most is the extended platform on the east wall with blocks laid out to form a house. I remember putting on an apron, insisting I would be the mother, and proceeding to do what mothers do: boss, demand, push and punish. Little surprise, I was soon asked to leave.

I had flunked kindergarten.

Fast forward twenty years. I returned to Occidental College to get my teaching credential. For my teacher’s training I was assigned Eagle Rock Elementary, scene of my disgrace