Loving the Unlikable

I’m sure you’ve heard people say, “Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten.” Well, everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten from my mother.

First, I obtained a basic understanding of why the world is the way it is, and a model of the greatest patience.

“Mom, why are apples red? Why are they called apples? Who invented apples? Can I have an apple? With peanut butter? And no peel?”

Apparently the easiest way to get someone to stop asking you questions is to give them something to eat, and I’ve used this technique many times on my husband and my dog. They think I’m really smart.

Mom also gave me a propensity for snide remarks during touching love scenes in the movies. I’m pretty sure I’m the only kindergartner who went, “Ew, I bet she has morning breath,” when Prince Charming kissed Sleeping Beauty.

She instilled in me an urgent sense of punctuality. One day when our school bus began rolling down an ice-covered hill backwards toward a sheer drop-off, all the other kids cried because they thought they were going to die. I cried because I thought I’d be late for school.

The most important lesson by far that my mom taught me in kindergarten was about love.

Every kindergarten class has several archetypes: the boy who eats anything (rocks, finger paste, worms, toilet paper, whatever), the girl who is always the mom when it’s time to play house, and the bully.

The bully of our kindergarten class was, in hindsight, mostly considered the bully because he was big—really, really big. He towered over the rest of us, and I think some of the teachers were even afraid of him. When we played jump rope, it got caught around his neck. He didn’t have to climb up at all to touch the top of the jungle gym. At snack time, the volunteering moms always gave him an extra helping because he was a “growing boy.” The rest of us prayed he was done growing and we’d eventually catch up. We were terrified of him.

One day at recess some kids decided to divide into teams. We didn’t have much of a plan of what these teams would do, except that one team would be Good and one team would be Bad. I immediately nominated myself for the Good team. After all, I could spell lots of four-letter words (not that kind) and had never had to sit out for recess.

The kids that were sitting out for recess were automatically on the Bad team, mostly because they weren’t there to defend themselves. We picked a few other bad apples and, of course, the bully.

To our surprise, the hulking, evil, horrible bully burst into tears and ran off to hang out with the kid who’d decided to eat as many ivy leaves as possible before the bell rang.

“Is he sad because we don’t like him?” I wondered aloud.

“Pfft,” scoffed the girl who was always the mom when we played house, fluffing her curly hair. “You don’t have to like everyone.”

That nagged at me for the rest of the morning, and when I got home I asked my mom about it.

“Mom, do you have to like everyone?”

She set a plate of peeled apples with peanut butter in front of me, probably hoping I’d start eating and forget what I’d asked, but I was not to be deterred. I waited for her answer, refusing to touch the delectable snack.

“Well, no, I don’t suppose you do,” she said finally, probably thinking about the lady at church who always volunteered to head up all the potlucks and then complained the whole time about it. “But you do have to love everyone,” she added.

My five year old brain took the afternoon to work that out, between rounds of playing dolls with my sister and rounds of hollering at my brothers to stop acting like babies… even if they were both still in diapers.

Finally, I decided that Mom was probably right. After all, I loved my brothers. I wasn’t sure I much liked them. They weren’t very fun to play with, and they made big messes and took a lot of attention. But I knew I loved them.

The next day at school, I told the girl who was always the mom when we played house that my mom had said she was wrong.

“She says you don’t have to like everyone, but you do have to love everyone,” I informed her, attempting to fluff my not-curly-at-all hair.

“That’s backwards,” she said, and then beat her pretend husband with a pink plastic spatula for dropping the baby on its head.

My attention span hadn’t developed enough for me to have a philosophical argument with her, and plus I didn’t want to get beaten with a spatula, so I went and played with the blocks instead. I knew Mom was right about the love thing, though, especially when I was the only kid who didn’t run away when the bully came over to play blocks too.

He turned out to be a decent kid. He didn’t throw things or pick his nose and he could spell five-letter words. Because I was willing to love him, I ended up liking him too.

Over the years there have been a lot of way more difficult people I’ve had to love in spite of disliking them quite a lot—the kind of people who are evil in ways far beyond throwing things and picking their noses. Most of the time it’s not easy, and a lot of times they have no redeeming qualities that I can see, except maybe their propensity for four-letter words (yes, that kind). But I have never felt bad or wrong for trying to love someone, and sometimes it does work just like in kindergarten—I find a friend where I might not have seen one before.

So, like I said: Everything I need to know, I learned in kindergarten… from my mother.

Happy birthday, Mom!

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