One of my earliest memories concerns a crude picture of a rainbow taped to the classroom wall on my first day of kindergarten. Rendered in broken crayon on cheap white paper, it was more of an elongated hump shape than an elegant arc. The spectrum of colors were probably incorrectly ordered, also, and there was no blue sky or green grass to add context. It was just a wonky rainbow suspended in blank space, signed Alice Stilton in a combination of upper and lower case letters.
But the picture's message was clear, nonetheless: "Fear not. School is not as bad as it seems. You Are Here at the start of the rainbow and there is an educational pot of gold at its end. Perhaps, in time, if you don't blot ink all over your books, daydream while staring out of the windows, or repeatedly kick the back of Peter Reynolds chair, you too might be rewarded with a picture of yours taped to the wall like Alice."
I wasn't fooled, of course. Partly because even at such an early age I had wisely developed a deep mistrust of institutions, but also because I happened to know Alice Stilton. She lived on my street. Hers was an ugly, vinyl-sided modern house, fronted by an incongruously Victorian solid oak door with a huge decorative brass knocker that I thought might turn into the face of Jacob Marley at any moment.
Most adults in the neighborhood seemed to think of Alice as the proverbial girl-next-door. Sure, if the girl-next-door was a ponytailed Quisling who invariably denounced her playmates' wrongdoings to their parents. Had she lived in occupied France, I have no doubt Alice would have drawn rainbows for the Nazi officers. Alice Stilton was a collaborator with the enemy as far as I was concerned.
So it was no surprise to me when Alice was afflicted with a case of hair lice and the nurse threatened to shave her head. Poetic justice for a traitor to her own peer group, we all agreed. The phony rainbow had finally faded from Alice Stilton's sycophantic life and clouds were rolling in. A case of "Vita Longa, Ars Brevis" I think you'd have to conclude.