Almost every child in East Germany went to Kindergarden. It was cheap, and as almost every parent (dads and mums) worked, this system of all-encompassing childcare was necessary. I started quite late - aged 5 - as I was looked after by my grandmother, but my mum decided I needed some socialisation with other children before starting school.
I hated Kindergarden! I didn’t like the Kindergarden teachers and one particularly stuck in my mind who got very vocal with me when I didn’t want to eat the food that was being served to us. I found the black pudding revolting, and still hate it to this day. I did tell mum that the teacher slapped my on my fingers and I was obviously very upset about it, as I did not receive this kind of punishment from my parents. Unthinkable now for a teacher to physically chastise children. I was also not used to playing with other children, and sports games were a particular nightmare. I was never good at any of it, and felt embarrassed, and didn’t understand why I just couldn’t do it. I was always the slowest - even though I was not overweigh. I never caught the ball, never managed to jump in the right direction and was generally very dyspraxic. Also, from an early age I hated the competitiveness. Not that I would have known any of this, nor my mum would have recognised it. And for the Kindergarden teachers - well, they didn’t have time nor was it their duty to develop and nurture individuals. I developed a deep hatred of anything relating to sport from this age on.
For some reason, I remember a particular incident in Kindergarden when a game was played. No idea why this has stuck in my memory, but this is the first thing which comes up when I remember my Kindergarden days. All the children had to stand in a circle, and the teachers shouted a month of the year out. When your birthday month was shouted out, you were supposed to be going into the middle of the circle. So, that is not a difficult game, and does not even involve any competitiveness, so what was the problem? I did not know my birth months. I did not even know what ‘months’ were, and January, February etc didn’t mean a thing to me. I was so horribly embarrassed for not knowing this, and just remained stumm. I decided that at some stage, I shall just go into the middle of the circle and hope that no-one notices. That is what I did, and that is actually already the end of this little episode. No, no one noticed, and I didn’t get pulled up on it. But for some reason, the internal embarrassment I felt just stuck.
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