kindergarten and baby goats

Reyna Marie enrolled in kindergarten today. This is a picture of my first grade class, which was mostly the same as my kindergarten class. I remember almost all of these children, which ones were smart, which ones were fun.

The boy on the far right in the front row was named Chris, and he was a naughty boy. He cheated when we played classroom games, he never did his work, and when he did it was messy. His desk was messy. He was the naughtiest boy I'd ever seen.

One day at one of the few recesses he'd been permitted, he was on a swing. He was going high and fast, and I don't remember doing anything but watching him. Then a girl - a good girl who was not a friend of mine, but whom I knew - walked in front of him. He said, "No! No! I can't stop!" But she was in front of him, and the corner of the wooden swing seat caught her in the temple. She fell down, she'd been knocked out. There was blood in her hair and on the swing. The teachers were there in a second. Chris was already crying and saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't stop." One girl said, "Sorry isn't good enough this time, Chris."

One teacher carried the girl inside, and another one spanked Chris even though it wasn't his fault, and it was obviously not his fault.

Chris continued to cheat when we played classroom games, but I remember deciding around that time that there is no person who is all bad.


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I wasn't present for Reyna's enrollment, but she and Mick told me about it. When she got there, they gave her a paper bear that had her name on it, and as she traveled from station to station, she got stickers to put on the bear. They wanted her to draw a person, so she drew a circular head, a neck, a face, a hairdo, a torso with arms, a skirt with legs coming out the bottom and shoes. She then proceeded to color it. The teacher was impressed. She said the children usually draw a circle with a face on it and limbs coming out of it.

They asked Reyna to count, and she counted to 100. They told us the children usually count to about 20. Reyna knew all the colors, the alphabet, how to spell her name. She was her usual, darling little self; she answered their questions and did just fine. There were some other girls there, and Mick said they were being sweet too. He said there were two boys. One was crying and saying he wanted to go home, didn't want to do whatever they wanted him to do. The other was burying his face in his mother's bosom.

(Image yoinked from: http://anabolicminds.com/forum/supplement-reviews-logs/88977-anabolicxtreme-3-ad.html)

There were some people there who referred to the children as "Kids." I don't like it. Kids are baby goats.

Let's pretend Mick has been invited somewhere, and he wants to know if it's ok to bring me along. Should he say, "Is it ok to bring my heifer?" or "Can I bring my sow?" or "What about the old bitch?" I would be pretty offended. If you call my child a baby goat, be prepared for her to be offended, and to remind you that "Kids are baby goats. Should I call you an old goat?"

Manna?

This is not the only place I have chosen the name "Manna" for myself, and I have been asked just how I chose Manna as my very own name. Well, oh, you know, the Jews were hungry in the desert, and God snowed food on them like bread crumbs, and it was tasty tasty Manna, or yeast or something. But that's not where my name came from, because Manna's not really my name for one thing.

My name is Amanda Manfredo. And if you look closely, you will find 2 mans in my name, I'm a man, duh. Everyone knows that the singular of man is Mannum, so since I have 2, I need the plural, Manna. But that's also not from whence cometh my name.

Manfredo means cold hand in Italian (sort of - mana freda). But that's not really my husband's last name. When his family came to the US from Naples, their last name was Mambre. But immigration officials changed it not to Smith or Jones, but to Manfredo which sounded more American. I have very little of my own Italian blood, so I am Italian by injection. And I am not really a man, nor a hand, but I might be a law.

Amanda means "worthy of love." And if you look in a religious baby name book, it means "worthy of God's love." And because of his love for me, my oldest nephew (now 13), when he was learning to talk, tried to say my name. For a long time he called me "Aunt Manna," and the rest of the family picked it up and called me Manna for a while too. I like it.

I have also been called Beth, Magna, Mandy, Goofy, Michael, Donald, Cleopatra, PJ and Sciencebabe.

My nephew's name is Gabriel. Gabriel is the name of an angel. In Islam, he is called the chief of the four favoured angels and the spirit of truth, and in some views Gabriel is the same as the Holy Spirit. I think it's good that a child with this namesake gave me this name.