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Memoir: Pre-Kindergarten

Prepare for full-scale existential panic. At any moment, a child may burst into sustained, earth-shaking sobbing, because a button has fallen off her pants. At first, you are unnerved, because the reaction seems so out of proportion with the thing that has gone wrong. But look deep into your soul. Think about waking up this morning. Did a part of you not want to let loose with earth-shaking sobs? It did. You can empathize. There's a beer waiting for you at 4:00.

*Lean on the Magic Schoolbus. For whatever reason, Amazon Prime and Netflix don't work with many SMARTBoards. But "The Magic Schoolbus," on Youtube, is always available. Children don't realize they are bored until midway through Episode Two--because there's a fair amount of color, and there are various diverting audio cues, in this series. Skip the final two minutes of any show, when Lily Tomlin reappears and gives a boring speech about the science behind the shenanigans you've just witnessed. Those final two minutes are deadly.

*Children often know what they need. Let's say your Pre-K student says, "I have scratched my forehead, and I need a band-aid, and it needs to be a rectangle." There is no visible scratch, and the child is not at all in distress. Still: Don't argue. Did *you* need that latte you purchased this morning? You'll mention that the band-aid might rip out the child's hair, a few hairs at least, and the child will roll his eyes. Your concerns are irrelevant. They are *for later* ....Just get the damn band-aid.

*The Olivia books have a formula. Olivia the piglet obtains a material good, then she loses the item, then she realizes she can manufacture her own version of the item, with cherished objects from her own life--and the homemade version is inevitably better than the shiny manufactured item (which reliably turns up again in the third act). If you find yourself sleepy and distracted, and your mind wanders, you can still "hook" your readers: Just remember there's a lost item, a crisis, and then an effort to make a replacement item. This will get you back on track.

That's what it means to be a sub in pre-K.

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