All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

by Robert Fulghum

  Now that’s transportation. The way I like to travel. And that’s me.

  If you hear of a dealer, let me know.

  DEAD END

  THIS SHOULD BE CALLED “The Mystery of Twenty-fifth Avenue, Northeast.” The story has semicosmic implications. It’s about the fact that strange things happened where we once lived at the dead end of a dead-end street, two blocks long, at the bottom of a hill in north Seattle.

  It wasn’t much of a street to look at in the first place. I mean, it really didn’t call to you to come down it. Kind of narrow and crooked and cluttered-up. Ed Weathers’s van and his brother’s GMC two-ton flatbed, and the Dillses’ old Airstream trailer were just part of the vehicular obstacle course. Still, you could see all the way down from the intersection at Ninety-fifth to the end of it.

  And there were two signs up there at Ninety-fifth, too—one on each side of the street. Big yellow and black signs. Both said the same thing: STREET ENDS. And down here at our end of the street was another sign, a big sign. Black and white, with stripes and reflectors and all. DEAD END is what it said. Right in the middle of the end of the street it said that. And you could see it for a long way off.

  Well, for all that, people just drove on down the street anyway.

  Not just part way, mind you. Not just to where the reality of the situation cleared up. No, sir. They drove all the way down, right up to the sign, the big black one with stripes, the one that said DEAD END.

  And they read that sign two or three times. As if they were foreigners and had to translate the English. They looked on either side of the sign to see if there was a way around it. Sometimes they sat there for two or three minutes adjusting their minds. Then they backed up and tried turning around as close to the sign as possible. Backing and filling between our yard and Mrs. Paulski’s marigold bed and the blackberry bushes across the street, running over some of each.

  Funny thing is that once they got turned around, they never drove away slow and thoughtful—as if they’d learned something. No, they tore away at full throttle, as if fleeing evil. There was no pattern. All kinds of vehicles, all kinds of people, broad daylight and pitch dark. Even a police car a couple of times. And once a fire truck.

  Innate skepticism or innate stupidity? I confess I do not know. A psychiatrist friend tells me it’s a sample of an unconscious need to deny—that everyone wants the road or The Way to continue on instead of ending. So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does.

  Now I was wondering. If I had printed that up and then put little copies in a little box and attached it to the sign that said DEAD END, with a smaller note that said “Free Information Explaining Why You Are Here—Take One” . . . if I had done that, would people have read it? Would it have made any difference? Would they have been more careful of the lawn and the marigolds and the blackberry bushes? Would they have driven away any slower? I don’t think so.

  Perhaps I should have put up a sign at the top of the hill that said WAYSIDE SHRINE AT END OF STREET—COME ON DOWN AND CONFRONT THE ULTIMATE MEANING OF LIFE. IT’S A DEAD END!”

  What effect would that have had on traffic?

  Recently I went back to visit my old neighborhood after many years away.

  The street is still a dead end. And not much else has changed. The neighbors say the unbelievers still drive all the way down to the sign, turn around, and flee. Life is still a dead end. And we still have a hard time believing it.

  TESTING

  IT’S BEEN REAL QUIET around our house this month. My wife is studying for her exams. Every seven years she must take and pass an all-day examination in order to be certified by the American Board of Family Practice Physicians as competent in her profession. She’s liable for everything she’s learned about medicine since the first day she walked into medical school.

  As for me, I panic just knowing I have to renew my driver’s license. I haven’t taken an exam since college. Just being in the same house with someone who is studying for one gives my brain the worry-willies.

  But it is a provocative notion—this business of being recertified every seven years. I wonder how it would be if all of us had to take a major exam as we passed through the decades of our lives after formal schooling was over. Suppose we had to prove our competency and proficiency as members of the human race. And if we didn’t pass muster, we’d have to go back to class for retraining.

  It makes some sense, actually. See, the only reason we’re required to go to school is that we believe a nation is better off educated than ignorant. It works for the common good. But just because we got through the system doesn’t mean anything really stuck or that we know how to apply what we know, does it?

  Sometimes I’m appalled by my own ignorance. One of my favorite Peanuts cartoons has Lucy asking Charlie Brown, “Don’t you wish you knew back then what you know now?” Charlie stares blank-eyed for a while, and then asks, “What do I know now?”

  Think about it. What do you know now? Just what should we have nailed down cold in our brains by, say, age thirty, to justify our education and our continuing participation in life with people?

  Reading, writing—still the basics. But right away there’s trouble. Did you know that 22 percent of adult Americans are functionally illiterate? About forty million people would not pass reading and writing. It’s true.

  As for math—we should at least still be able to add and subtract and multiply and divide—even fractions. No algebra, though. If algebra is on the test, I’m going to get sent back to junior high school for the rest of my life.

  What else? History’s got to be on the exam. We get into continual peril because we lose track of the long and wide view of human experience. And basic civics has got to be tested. When only 38 percent of the eligible voters show up at the polls at a national election, some of us need reeducation about democracy.

  By age thirty we ought to be clear on matters of money, sex, health, and love, because nothing causes more grief lifelong than our ignorance and ineptitude on these items.

  So, basic economics and personal finance has to be on the exam—“Make a simple budget—demonstrate knowledge of balancing a checkbook.” Ha. Right.

  If you haven’t got sex figured out by the time you’re thirty, you’d better go back to class. Basic health—and first aid—should be current.

  But love may have to be left off the exam. Most of us will never learn.

  What else? How about knowledge of ethics, law, ecology, and science?

  Sure, but all that is tidy-fact stuff. What about more subtle things? What should you know by thirty about art, music, and literature? How about friendship, honor, courage, truth, beauty, happiness, hope, imagination, wisdom, humor, and death? Whoa. This is getting out of hand. It seemed like a good idea when I began. I’m already over-questioned.

  And we haven’t even dealt with the existential items, such as:

  Why is there Something instead of Nothing?

  When will I have time, and who knows where the time goes?

  How deep is the ocean—how high the sky?

  When is enough enough?

  What are people for?

  Is there life before death?

  Is it true that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing?

  And if birds fly over the rainbow, why can’t I?

  BUFFALO TAVERN

  ONE PORTION OF A MINISTER’S LOT concerns the dying and the dead. The hospital room, the mortuary, the funeral service, the cemetery. What I know of such things shapes my life elsewhere in particular ways. What I know of such things explains why I don’t waste much life mowing grass or washing cars or raking leaves or making beds or shining shoes or washing dishes. It explains why I don’t honk at people who are slow to move at green lights. And why I don’t kill spiders. There isn’t time or need for all this. What I know of cemeteries and such also explains why I sometimes visit the Buffalo Tavern.


  The Buffalo Tavern is, in essence, mongrel America. Boiled down and stuffed into the Buffalo on a Saturday night, the fundamental elements achieve a critical mass around eleven. The catalyst is the favorite house band, the Dynamic Volcanic Logs. Eight freaks frozen in the amber vibes of the sixties. Playing stomp-hell rockabilly with enough fervor to heal the lame and the halt. Mongrel America comes to the Buffalo to drink beer, shoot pool, and dance. Above all, to dance. To shake their tails and stomp frogs and get rowdy and holler and sweat and dance. When it’s Saturday night and the Logs are rocking and the crowd is rolling, there’s no such thing as death.

  One such night the Buffalo was invaded by a motorcycle club, trying hard to look like the Hell’s Angels and doing pretty good at it, too. I don’t think these people were in costume for a movie. And neither they nor their ladies smelled like soap and water were an important part of their lives on anything like a daily basis. Following along behind them was an Indian—an older man, with braids, beaded vest, army surplus 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.”

  GUMMY LUMP

  WATCHED 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 three children.

  The treasures of King Tut are nothing in the face of this.

  Have you got something around the house like a gummy lump? Evidence of love in its most uncomplicated and most trustworthy state? You may live a long, long time. You may receive gifts of great value and beauty. You may experience much love. But you will never believe in it quite as much as you believe in the gummy lump. It makes your world go round and the ride worth the trouble.

  The three children are grown up now. They still love me, though it’s harder sometimes to get direct evidence. And it’s love that’s complicated by age and knowledge and confusing values. Love, to be sure. But not simple. Not something you could put in a shoebox.

  This sticky icon sits on a shelf at the top of my closet. Nobody else knows it’s there. But I do. It is a talisman, a kind of cairn to memory, and I think about it every morning as I dress. Once in a while I take it down from the shelf and open it. It is something I can touch and hold and believe in, especially when love gets difficult and there are no small arms around my neck anymore.

  Oh, sure, this is the worst kind of simpleminded, heartrending Daddy-drivel imaginable. I’ve probably embarrassed us both by telling you. But its beats hell out of a mood ring or a mantra or a rabbit’s foot when it comes to comfort.

  I have no apology. The gummy lump stands for my kind of love. Bury it with me.

  I want to take it with me as far as I go.

  MOTHER TERESA

  She died in 1997.

  And this essay was written twenty years ago.

  I removed it from the new manuscript, thinking the sentiments were shop-worn, the events out of date, and Mother Teresa a fading memory. So, you may well ask, why is the essay included here?

  Seeing it in the reject pile troubled me. I read it several times again. And I realized the essay was not about Mother Teresa so much as it was about me and all those who try to resolve the inner conflict between self-interest and self-sacrifice. Trying to care about Me and care about Them and care about Us at the same time is an ongoing bewilderment.

  THERE WAS A PERSON who profoundly disturbed my peace of mind for a long time. She didn’t know me, but she went around minding my business. We had very little in common. She was an old woman, an Albanian who grew up in Yugoslavia; she was a Roman Catholic nun who lived in poverty in India. I disagreed with her on fundamental issues of population control, the place of women in the world and in the church, and I was turned off by her naïve statements about “what God wants.” People who claim to speak for God do more harm than good, if you ask me. She and her followers drove me crazy. They seemed so pious and self-righteous. I got upset every time I heard her name or read her words or saw her face. I didn’t even want to talk about her. Who the hell did she think she was, anyhow?

  However. In the studio where I used to work, there was a sink. Above the sink was a mirror. I stopped at this place several times each day to tidy up and look at myself in the mirror. Alongside the mirror was a photograph of the troublesome old woman. Each time I looked in the mirror at myself, I also looked at her face. In it I have seen more than I can tell; and from what I saw, I understood more than I can say. I could not get her out of my mind or life.

  That photograph was taken in Oslo, Norway, on the tenth of December, in 1980. This is what ha
ppened there: The small, stooped woman in a faded blue and white sari and worn sandals received an award. From the hand of a king. An award funded from the will of the inventor of dynamite. In a great glittering hall of velvet and gold and crystal. Surrounded by the noble and famous in formal black-tie and elegant gowns. The rich, the powerful, the brilliant, the talented of the world in attendance. And there—at the center of it all—this little old lady in sari and sandals. Mother Teresa, of India. Servant of the poor and sick and dying. To her, the Nobel Peace Prize.

  She was given the longest standing ovation in the history of the prize.

  No president or king or general or scientist or pope or banker or merchant or cartel or oil company or ayatollah holds the key to as much power as she had. None is as rich. For hers was the invincible weapon against the evils of this earth: the caring heart. And hers were the everlasting riches of this life: the wealth of the compassionate spirit.

  I would not do what she did or the way she did it. But her presence on the stage of the world dares me to explain just what the hell I will do, then, and how, and when.

  Several years after she won the Nobel Prize, when I was attending a grand conference of quantum physicists and religious mystics at the Oberoi Towers Hotel in Bombay, I saw her in person. Standing by the door at the rear of the hall, I sensed a presence beside me. And there she was. Alone. This tiny woman had come to speak to the conference as its guest.

  She strode to the rostrum and changed the agenda of the conference from intellectual inquiry to moral activism. She said, in a firm voice to the awed assembly: “We can do no great things; only small things with great love.”