By Ann von Dehsen, February 25, 2021 — At the age of four I went to nursery school two mornings a week. It was strictly a morning program held in the owner’s large Victorian house. The whole first floor was converted into the school and each little high ceilinged room some with stained glass windows had a title: The block room, the art room, the pretend room, etc. I loved going there because to me, it looked like a castle from the fairytales and my mother read to me. After morning circle and we children were allowed from room to room to room until the closing storytime circle. My friend Timmy and I spent a lot of time in the pretend room playing house. True to mid-1950’s social norms I put on an apron from the dress-up box while Timmy put on a tie and a man’s hat with a little feather on the side. While I fed bottles to our two baby doll children Timmy would ride around and indoor riding toy pretending to be going to work and then ride home quickly when I was making a pretend dinner with the pretend food in the pretend kitchen. It was a good marriage.
One day, Timmy and I were playing with children-sized scissors in the art room and decided we would cut each other’s hair. He gave me a chunky cut as he cut big chunks all around my hair in random spots. I gave his bangs and a nice zigzag cut. Satisfied with our creations, we played outside until it was time for the closing circle. But as we all gathered on the rug, our teacher looked very serious and told us that she had discovered hair in the art room and that some kids have been cutting hair which was not allowed. She also said that if the kids that did it admitted that they did it they would not be punished. Now, only a sightless person would not be able to identify the chopped-up culprits. But Timmy and I stood our ground and shrugged our shoulders as if to say “Jeez who would have done that”. As moms started to come for pick-up the teacher told me and Timmy to stay put. A few minutes later she returned with our startled Moms who said in unison, “What happened to your hair?” I burst out into tears saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” to my mom and then to my teacher a very anticlimactic confession. “I did it, I did it,” as Timmy chimed in, “I did it too.”
After we had all calmed down, Timmy and I were handed brooms and dustpans and sent off to clean the art room. We were also not allowed to use scissors for a couple of weeks. When we returned to school the next week we were both sporting rescue haircuts. I had a pixie and he had a crew cut. We no longer played much together, if at all. I guess our four-year-old brains blamed each other for getting into trouble. One day though I did ask him if he’d like to play house with me and he said “No, I don’t wanna play with you ever again.” And then I realized my days and making his dinner and taking care of his children were over. I call it “my first divorce” because simply put, isn’t that what happens when adults get divorced? They no longer want to play with each other anymore either.