When I was 5 years old I cut class.

It was the second day of kindergarten, in a school which housed two classes, in a building called the Seaman House, which appears in my memory as a white non-leaning tower-of-Pisa.

The day before, my assumed-friend Susie and I were driven to the Seaman House. She was sent into one kindergarten room and I into the other. I say she was my assumed-friend because I don’t remember being fond of her or wanting to play with her. I recall her as chubby and homely and boring with one remarkable feature: yellow teeth. I remember being told they were the result of her mother taking the antibiotic tetracycline while pregnant with her. Susie’s mother and my mother were friends, and Susie and I were the same age, so it was assumed that we were friends.

I don’t remember anything about that first day in kindergarten except my disappointment. I’d been waiting to go to school, and I expected it to be much more grown up. I wasn’t one of those children who needed a lot of sleep – I was nap-resistant, in fact – so the mandatory rest time was a nasty surprise.

The second day of school, after Susie and I got out of the car, I followed her into her class instead of joining mine. Again I don’t remember specifics about the class time – they must have rested too but if I recall anything it was satisfaction at not being noticed or asked to leave – except for what I told my mother afterward.

She picked us up when school was over and asked us how it was.

“I went to Susie’s class today.”

“Huh?” My mom was lifting her chin and turning the steering wheel when she asked that.

“I didn’t like my class yesterday, so I went to Susie’s today.”

“Did you like Susie’s class?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you like about her class that yours didn’t have?”

“Well for one thing, the teacher called out each kid’s name, and then the kid got to say ‘here’ or ‘present.’”

“Did the teacher call your name?”

“No.”

“That’s because you were absent.”