The white plastic horse

The pretty little horse was white plastic and it was mine. Except that in reality it wasn’t. It belonged to the nursery school and I’d played with it that day. But to a three year old toddler that mere fact means nothing. I was playing with it, I liked it and it was coming home with me so that I could play with it some more. I don’t remember actually taking it, or walking home with it in the sticky hand that wasn’t clutching my Mother’s oh-so-tightly, or even playing with it in our 1970s front room. I took it back the next day apparently and apologised to the teacher, but I don’t remember that either. What I remember is my Mother’s voice when she realised that I’d taken it. Stolen it. Her disapproving and disappointed tone crumpled my soft smile as I dissolved into tears, distraught that I’d done wrong, that I’d let her down. I would hear that tone occasionally during the childhood years that followed but that first time, that very first time, shouts out to me from the past as my earliest memory.

This week’s RemembeRED prompt over at The Red Dress Club is a memory of kindergarten or it’s British equivalent; nursery school.