a flash from the past

When I was in kindergarten we used to spend what seemed like hours looking at flash cards. This one girl at the front used to get them all. I don’t think I shouted out one answer that whole year of half days.

I can still see the bright shiny red apple. I was a shy kid and it didn’t help that it was a French immersion class and I really didn’t speak any French until years later. It came to me the other day that I never really grew up.

What I mean is that my mother still seems to test me on fruits and doesn’t even bother testing me on vegetables.

“What’s this?” She’ll ask me walking down the aisle in a dark, dusty grocery store that sells things that Mr. IGA never heard of.

“I’m not sure, is it…” My mother gives me a look like I’m a child on the verge of learning something that I should already know.

“Smell it” she’ll say, we never smelled the flash cards, and yet my mother can’t understand how I would try to name it before smelling it.

I smile big because my nose assures me it’s guava and my smile assures my mother, or maybe reassures her.