Turning Point

Birren #1a

June 2006

Although it set my life on a totally different path, I was not at all aware of the importance of a decision made when I was five years old.

When I began kindergarten in Toledo, Ohio, in 1931 it was expected that I would attend for two years: the first year was in the afternoon, and the second year was in the morning. The cut-off date for attendance was a fourth birthday by

December 31, and since my birthday is January 20, I correctly began in September of 1931.

I remember kindergarten with a great deal of affection, with the exception of a nap (we each had our own little rug) which I thought was a bore, though it was for only 10 or 15 minutes. Someone brought in a branch with a cocoon on it, and I was enchanted when a beautiful butterfly emerged.

It seems that at sometime in that year I was given an intelligence test (though I

have no recollection of it) and at the end of the year the teacher recommended that I skip the second year of kindergarten, and go into the first grade the following September. My parents asked if I wanted to move up, and it seemed like a great idea to me. (A playmate in the neighborhood, Jimmy Forester, had a birthday the same month, but was not asked to go ahead, and his mother was quite upset. Jimmy and I were never as good friends after that.)

So instead of being one of the oldest members of my class, I became the youngest in my class, and remained so throughout my entire education.

Probably the most important occurrence in the first grade was my meeting Nancy Lee Boyer with whom I fell in love and married twenty-one years later. (Nancy was three months older than I.)

When I went to high school, I picked up extra credits along the way, and with World War II dragging on, I graduated in three years, shortly after my 16th birthday.

Years later I learned that I had been chosen to be the editor of my high school yearbook my senior year, but was never informed; I wish I had been given a choice, though I am not sure what I would have done.

When I went away to college I was still the youngest in my class though most

of the freshman men were indeed younger than many high school graduates;

but, like me, they were trying to get as much education as possible before being drafted into the army. Since most freshman women were older, and socially far more sophisticated, we really were not easily accepted as part of a normal social milieu, especially since we had Air Corps, Navy, and Marine units on campus.

Incidentally, the war ended after my sophomore year, and i was never drafted.

At Denison, once again I picked up extra credits, and could have graduated at 19, but finally waited until I was an old man of 20; by then almost all my study was individual work with a professor. (My senior year I signed up for a course in Modern Drama given by an old friend in the English department, Professor Ellenor Shannon, and since I had already read most of the plays in the text, she made out a special reading list for me and made me promise NOT to come to class.)

I took a year off in New York, and then attended Northwestern where I received

a Master of Arts degree when I was 22 years old. I then went to teach at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, as head of the theatre program, where many

of my students were my age, or even older.

* * * * *

And now, with few exceptions, I am the oldest member of my social group.

rwtf