Jimmy was four years old and I needed to find him a Kindergarten class, a school to enroll in. His grandmother, always thinking, had entered him into a drawing for a highly regarded charter school. My mom had visited the place and said she was impressed. All the classrooms were homey and decorated in a multiplicity of colors. It was a small school. Grandma was told that the kids, parents, and teachers all knew each other by name. I received a phone call from Tapestry after a few months. "Your son came in third," they said.

I met with Joy, the principal, Gina, the Kindergarten teacher, and Judy, the teacher's aide. "Your son is only four years old," Joy said. "After Gina and I met with him, we wondered if he was mature enough, intellectually, socially, and emotionally. "I think that after a while going into class day to day, he'll conform," I replied. "The boy is a bit intense," Joy said. Then added, "But maybe that's just his personality." I made an intense look on my face. I did not like intensity considered as something wrong. Joy said, "Has he ever been to pre-school?" I said no. "But he was in a music class for children before this." "Why did you not put him in pre-school?" Joy went on. I tried to think. "Well, I didn't go to pre-school myself," I said. Joy, Gina, and Judy all looked at me as if I was a little crazy. I couldn't come up with an argument on the spot. I was about to say that he was among the other children in the music class, and oh...I remembered that he was in a play group for toddlers. Joy interrupted my thoughts. "I have 20 years experience teaching children. Gina has ten. That's 30 years experience between us." I felt very helpless and awful. I was extremely angry and disgusted. I knew Jimmy better than any of them, even if they accumulated experience till the day they're buried. My son was brilliant like his mom. And dad. But I couldn't come out and say that. The boy and I were close. We had a connection between us that was almost supernatural. "Give him a chance," I said. "Just give him two weeks." "We will!" Gina replied, finally speaking. Then talked about how immature Jimmy is and must be. According to my schedule, Jimmy would "conform" within two weeks. It was slow and long, but Jimmy was in sync with the other kids in the class. He was getting adjusted to being without his mom, knowing I'd always pick him up at the end of the day. Two weeks was right on target. As more time passed, the three Js seemed to forget our initial conversation. No one said to me, "Rose, we were wrong. Sometimes we are wrong, and we apologize." That would have been nice. It would have relieved my angry, resentful feelings.

In any case, as time raced on, and Jimmy found himself in middle school then high school, he had become the star musician at Tapestry, playing piano for different classes, the entire school, and on graduation night, 2017. The only achievement perhaps greater than that was becoming valedictorian that year. But that's not enough. I had to write this because it isn't enough. Joy, Gina, Judy - you're uppity idiots. You made me very uncomfortable the whole time my son was a student at Tapestry. I suspect that some of this prejudice against Jimmy was your attitude towards me, his mother. In fact, over the years, I took endless shitloads of crap from these people. It was as bad as CPS at my door every 3 months.