Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
The last time I remember staying up to watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve in Times Square was sometime in the 1980s. Since I find myself right on the lower cusp of middle at this point in my life, the turning of the year these days causes my thoughts to turn backward more often than not.
Sometime in the middle 1980s, Robert Lee Fulghum, an American author, wrote, “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” In the political, social and mass media environments we find ourselves in today, it occurs to me that now would be a good time to review some of the lessons we all learned in kindergarten. What follows is by no means a complete list of these lessons.
Under the general heading of “Good Behavior,” would come: “Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.”
Take a hard look at these things and ask yourself if our society still considers them virtues or hindrances in gaining our goals.
Hygiene has: “Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush.” That last one may be the most important.
“Take a nap every afternoon.” Remember when the teachers had everyone put their head down on the desk, close their eyes and be quiet? They almost had to pull a pistol on us to get us to do that. When I got to be about 30 years old the benefits of the siesta finally sunk in. Today, sometimes my afternoon nap slops over into my mid-afternoon nap. I quit worrying about it.
“When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.” Three or four weeks ago, I was passing a school when a line of children, shepherded by two teachers, crossed the street doing exactly that. Hadn’t seen that in years.
One of the hardest lessons we all have to learn is, “Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.”
If you only remember one thing from this essay, remember this, “Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.”
Happy New Year. Thanks for reading the paper.
Rube Render is a former Clovis city commissioner and former chair of the Curry County Republican Party. Contact him:
