All right, let's get to it.

This is what remains of the kindergarten in my hometown that I used to go to as a kid.

The photograph was taken last week.

A one-story, cross-shaped building with a tiled roof and a basement under the staircase used to stand there. I went to it every morning when I was a four-year-old boy.

I remember quite a few things from my time there.

My mother bringing me there each morning. No cars, just walking from home. She told me the same improvized story lots of times. It was the best the first time she had to think about it but I hoped and hoped she would someday get it right again ;) ...

The not tasty food in flat-bottomed metal bowls...

The two bullies that got bitten by me on my first day there. How was I the bad guy in the teachers' verbal reports? At least nobody bullied me anymore. Not there, at least. I had forgotten how to bite my classmates in later years...

I was fond of girls with short hair. Too fond of them for them to feel comfortable with it. Well, tough luck, looking good...

There was another classroom a door from ours and we only visited it once on Chrismas. There was no Santa back then. He was called Grandpa Frost...or Freeze, like Mr. Freeze...

We turned to our teachers by the honorific...Comrade...

There were two female teachers regularly on shifting duties and to me they were the bad cop and the good cop...

A four-year-old girl-comrade showed me women peed while squatting...

There was a swinging cast-iron door in the play yard that we lowed to swing on and teachers disapproved...

We had PE each morning in the yard with songs. We made circles, holding hands...

There was a set of painted large wooden blocks inside for us to play with. At least those were my favorites. Competition for them was tough...

We had booklets with colored paper for us to cut and glue to other colored paper sheets. Sometimes we got to draw stuff, perhaps. Because I remember trying to write my name with the letters I knew at the age of four. My letters. I did it. From right to left, though. Like in Hebrew or in Arab languages...

We had to sleep each afternoon. The beds were falling down from the walls. Light brown color. I hated sleeping or pretending to sleep in the afternoon...

I and a neighbor kid of mine had different techniques and disagreed on how we were to pull our pullovers off...

I remember what the play yard looked like. There were painted automobile tires as tunnels, iron designs for climbing, a slide, birch trees touching the top of it...

I remember cucumbers and cheese — the food I liked. In the afternoons...

I remember the fresh green of a fir tree's new branches...

I remember my mother giving me the opportunity to have a summer vacation like older kids, those in school, and I remember me taking that opportunity...

To never return.

Thanks for remembering with me!

Yours,

Manol