On this day in 1984, the morning and the late morning were book-ended in real hurt.My career in nursery school typically oscillated between golden, happy days, and dark Mordor-like days. This day, as my parents dropped me at the school, I bawled tears of anxiety, bawled tears of separation. and as I passed through the heavy, dark and creaky gate, the tears I cried drenched my favourite two-toned t-shirt.
As my teacher took me by the hand, consoling me, I entered the linoleum-floored classroom.
The smell of fresh poster paint cleaves to the inside walls of my nostrils as it's slapped onto card by tiny nimble fingers that have been up noses, plunged into play dough, and sprawled across white walls. The deep, congealed, blood red, the ocean dark blue, and the Namaqualand bright daisy yellow bottles of paint line the window sill through which the winter sun-light pierces casting a prism on the white notice board. A ziggurat of Hazyview-scented, freshly-cut pine-wooden building blocks, their veiny grain giving grip to small hands, knock and tumble as us kids build and bash empires. Kids push baby prams, and others go shopping with small trolleys. It's the Shibuya Junction, their order, our chaos.
As the last bite of our apricot jam-and-buttered sandwich is soaked into our skins, and the nuclear glow of the Oros orange juice, held precariously in the scuffed plastic cups, courses through our little child-veins emitting a halo around our bodies, and the wave of hyper energy fires our thrusters, the steel school bell for playground-time ding-a-lings. We break out of close quarters, hurtling towards the playground screaming in pent up excitement. Some kids skittle towards the sand pits, others towards the split-pole bus, some bee-line for the car-carcass and others, to the swings. Friends grab each other's hands dragging one another like rag dolls excited to share experience.
Me, i walk out of the steel-framed glass doors cooly, a wind howling through my GHD straight hair. The velcro on my North Stars wrapped tightly across my feet fitting snug and ready to race. The white piping on my silky Road shorts giving me fashion runway street cred. Having eaten my jam-stained isosceles-triangled bread slice, I walk beyond the stoep into the morning sunshine. My favourite red-coloured t-shirt clings to my skin. I head to that car and sit on the mustard-coloured leather seats, the scent of which reminds me of my grandpa Bing's giant Triumph. My hands caressing the perfectly smooth, circular steering wheel. I'm dreaming that i'm in a JP Special F1 car, smoking a cohiba. As other kids came to invade my space, I exit the car door. and I continue to drift alone - me and the mentos-coloured, spiked caterpillar on the green leaf of the tree hanging heavily above the playground.
As i moseyed on to anywhere, stopping at points to draw circles in the dusty sand with my toes, I pass by the swings. Just as i walk on, the air around me turns to a sucking sensation, things turn to silence, and with that ominous feeling a pair of flailing legs and feet in red leather sandals approached me at 300knots an hour on the up swing arriving to panel me and my torso, sending me skidding across the worn patch of grassy sand, the gravel burn tearing at my palms, at my dignity. Being floored, my being deflated as a popped squash ball left limp in the corner of the court, I got up off the dirt and bawled my cool-blue eyes casting a river down the playground.
My teacher rushed to pick me up, hugged me gently as I wetted her camisole.
It was a field of dreams. but after four decades, it's still embedded.
