All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

pants, and tennis shoes. He was really ugly. Now I’m fairly resourceful with words, and I would give you a flashy description of this man’s face if it would help, but there’s no way around it—he was, in a word, ugly. So ugly he was beautiful. That kind of ugly.
    He sat working on his Budweiser for a long time. When the Dynamic Logs ripped into a scream-out version of “Jailhouse Rock” he moved. Shuffled over to one of the motorcycle mommas and invited her to dance. Most ladies would have refused, but she was amused enough to shrug and get up.
    Well, I’ll not waste words. This ugly, shuffling Indian ruin could
dance. I
mean, he had the
moves.
Nothing wild, just effortless action, subtle rhythm, the cool of a master. He turned his partner every way but loose and made her look good at it. The floor slowly cleared for them. The band wound down and out, but the drummer held the beat. The motorcycle-club group rose up and shouted for the band to keep playing. The band kept playing. The Indian kept dancing. The motorcycle momma finally blew a gasket and collapsed in someone’s lap. The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, “Well, what the hell you waiting for? Let’s DANCE.”
    The band and the crowd went off like a bomb. People were dancing all through the tables to the back of the room and behind the bar. People were dancing in the restrooms and around the pool tables. Dancing for themselves, for the Indian, for God and Mammon. Dancing in the face of hospital rooms, mortuaries, funeral services, and cemeteries. And for a while, nobody died.
    “Well,” said the Indian, “what the hell you waiting for? Let’s dance.”

 
     
     

    G UMMY L UMP
    W ATCHED A MAN setting up a Valentine’s Day display in a store window. It’s the middle of January, but the merchants need to get a jump on love, I guess. Don’t get me wrong—merchants are fine folks. They give us choices and keep us informed on the important holidays. How would you know it was Halloween or Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day early enough to do something about it if merchants didn’t stay on the job?
    The other group I count on is kindergarten teachers. They always know about holidays, and when it comes to valentines and other evidence of love, no merchant can compete with them. What the kindergarten teachers set in motion, no merchant could sell—it’s beyond price—you can’t get it at the store.
    What I’m talking about here is something I think of as the
gummy lump.
Once it was a shoebox, decorated and given to me by the oldest child. Then it became a repository of other relics of childhood given to me by the younger children. The shoebox became my treasure chest in time. Its components are standard: Three colors of construction paper—pink and red and white—faded now, aluminum foil, orange tissue paper, several paper doilies, three kinds of macaroni, gumdrops, jelly beans, some little white hearts (the kind that taste like Tums) with words on them, and the whole thing held together with a whole big lot of white library paste, which also tastes like Tums.
    Anyhow, this shoebox isn’t looking too very good now. It’s a little shriveled and kind of moldy where the jellybeans and gumdrops have run together. It’s still sticky in places, and most of it is more beige than red and white. If you lift the lid, however, you will begin to know what makes me keep it. On folded and faded and fragile pieces of large-lined school paper, there are words: “Hi daddi” and “Hoppy valimtime” and “I lov you.” A whole big lot of “ I lov you.” Glued to the bottom of the box are twenty-three X’s and O’s made out of macaroni. I’ve counted them more than once. Also scrawled in several places are the names of