True Love

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First day of kindergarten. Ahuntsic School, September 1956. A month after the children's party at the Allan Memorial.


Their mom drops them off in her camel hair coat and headscarf. She watches them sadly from outside the frost fence as the children line up and follow their teachers inside.

At recess her brother comes to the corner of the yard where she is standing by herself and swears to defend her from the older boys.  He chases after a small gang of them yelling Don't touch my sister!

She tells him to go make friends and eventually she joins some kindergarten girls who have a skipping rope.

One two three Alaery
Four five six Alaery

The girls take turns at the ends cranking the rope and skipping. Up and down, two foot one foot.

Some girls miss a beat and get tangled in the rope then they have to take an end and turn the handle.

Getting out of the middle without tripping is even harder but she masters the rhythm and soon she is indistinguishable from the other girls skipping

On the mountain stands a lady
Who she is I do not know
All she wants is gold and silver
All she wants is a nice young man
So call in my Annie dear

Fly fly away - Goodbye!

All goes well in the first floor Kindergarten which is sunny and has paints and chalk and songs and games and letters and photos of animals

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Society_(1956_film)

Mrs Vandenberg likes to draw on the blackboard with colored chalk and the children try to copy her images onto paper with their crayons.

It's hard to be 5 years old and a government project engaged to be married and all by yourself in a room full of children who can neither read nor write.

Then it's Halloween and they make masks and hats. Mrs V hands out candies.

It starts to snow and it's always dark and then comes the Christmas party. Mrs Vandenberg divides them all into couples, boy and girl, and shows them how to hold their partner for ballroom dancing ...

She demonstrates using a little boy in a tuxedo his dark hair combed back like a movie star, and his partner a little blonde girl in a frilly dress.

Boy holds the girl around the waist, while girl places a hand on boy's shoulder. Like so. One two three- one two three that's a waltz.

Then she plugs in the record player and puts a record on the turntable. Bing Crosby starts to croon as all the tiny couples revolve around the  dance floor.

True love... True love

Dancing with some strange boy brings back the feeling of the children's party last summer when she danced with Mike. Now she's all excited and can't stop talking.

She keeps talking even after their teacher makes them all sit down for a rest. "Please be quiet, no talking" but something has come over the girl. She looks into the boy's face and sees grinning Mike and she's so happy she's delirious.

"If you don't quiet down you'll have to sit in the corner."

Three strikes and she's crying in the corner staring at the wall. Inconsolable. Hysterical. The teacher tries to comfort her and get her to stop but she can't.

True love... true love

The teacher phones her mother to come and get her.

"I'll never do that again" says Mrs Vandenberg.




They don't tell you they have a plan for you, let alone what it is. They let you think you are like all the others, in the classrooms and schoolyards of life. Then they whisk you downtown for special events and parties which you don't remember later because they have all these ways of wiping your memory. Your frequent absences can be explained by childhood illnesses and a frail constitution - when in fact you're healthy as a horse but they keep dosing you with drugs etc...

Thus you are able inhabit two worlds, but one is behind the looking glass and resembles a dream

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