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2002-05-13 | 6:21 p.m.

Okay, let's get back to my childhood. In first grade, we put on a circus. I was the ringmaster. I remember the first-grade teacher making a fuss over me because I had written my own speech without help. "Ladiiiiiiiiies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls!" I must have gotten it all from TV because I don't think we ever went to the circus. I must have gotten out of line, though, because I also remember the teacher threatening that if I didn't behave, she would let Alan be the ringmaster. And I took heed and made damn sure it was me and not him. Maybe that's why I've always disliked the name Alan and its variants. The name 'Alanis Morrisette' really bothers me in a visceral way, because I also dislike girls' names that derive from boys' names and that's two in a row.

(If your name derives from a boys' name, don't worry, I won't hold it against you! Most girls' names do. After a while, it's hard to notice people's names anymore, I think. They just become their names. Sometimes I find it hard to remember when two people have the same name, because in my mind, the names have a different connotation, which is almost like a different mental inflection. It's weird.)

Okay, getting back to the first-grade circus... I was also supposed to be a clown so I wore a top hat and tails with white-face clown makeup. My mother took tons of pictures but only two of me, one very far away (and in which I am not the focus of the camera's attention) and one close up, in my clown getup, with downcast eyes. It is out of focus.

That is everything I remember about the first grade. It seems as if I should remember more, but that's all I have.

No--there's something else. On the first day of school, it must have been in first grade, some music started playing over the loudspeaker. All the other kids shuffled out of their chairs and stood up besides their desks. I watched them, but I didn't stand up. I didn't feel any anxiety; clearly this inexplicable behavior had nothing to do with me. The teacher came running over, half-hysterical. "You need to stand up," she hissed. "This is the national anthem! You're supposed to stand!!" You would have thought Joe McCarthy himself were standing in the doorway.

In second grade, my teacher's name was Ann Fitzgerald and she had a big, downy brown mole on her cheek. I learned my multiplication tables. That is all I remember about the second grade. Shouldn't there be more?

Third grade. Mrs. Sterger. She pretended to hold a bowl in her hands and stir the contents. "Stirrrrrrrrrrr!" she intoned vigorously, and we repeated it. Then she growled in imitation of a lion, loudly. "Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!" we repeated. That was how to pronounce her name. That is all I remember about the third grade.

If I think about the school for a while longer, I can come up with more memories that are not classroom-specific.

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