My parents began going to a small church in Washington around this time. Though it is a mega-church now, it was founded in 1980, (and began meeting in a gymnasium with about 30 people). My parents were among the first to begin attending.

Des Moines is about a 45 minute drive from Yelm where we lived, but we would make the trek every Sunday morning and sometimes Wednesday too.

I remember the daycare there. It had bright orange 10 foot benches for kids to sit on. I remember the child proof locks on all the cupboard doors in the craft area and how I knew how to open every last one.

We used to have to hold a yellow rope anywhere we walked. Some of them had rings for the kids to hold on to, some of them just had knots every couple of feet. I never minded holding the rope, but I always wondered why nobody else in the older classes ever had to do it.

There was a kid named David Arnold that always sang the “Transformers” theme song. I only remember this because I thought “More than meets the eye” was “More than mees-chee-eye”

I wasn’t actually allowed to watch Transformers, so I didn’t really know the theme song. I made a mental note to ask my parents later what “More than Mees-chee-eye” meant.

I also remember learning how to spell “bananas” because Kim Kester would shout out “I like bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S!” from her office while I was trekking down the hallway, stuck to a yellow rope, on the way to a group bathroom break. And it stuck with me. I remember getting “bananas” right on a 2nd grade spelling test and thinking how I learned that word when I was three. My friend Jonathan also intentionally misspelled the word “girl” on that same test because, well… girls were just… ewwwww.

The world is much different looking through the eyes of a 3-year-old than the eyes of a 2nd grader.

Day-care was right across the hall from the Pre-school classes and Kindergarten classes so there were always a lot of kids around. The general area always had a distinct smell. I later discovered it was “cleaning product mixed with vomit” smell.

It could be worse right? I mean, at least there was the cleaning product smell.