What He Learned

Today, walking to work from Metro, I thought about the book Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.  It was crossing the street that made it come to mind and, once there, it wouldn't go away.

The book was quite a phenomenon when it was published in 1986, and a 25th anniversary edition appears to be selling briskly. In it, Robert Fulghum says that he stands by his simple rules, that he still believes if we only practiced what we learned in kindergarten we would all be better off.

What did we learn? Things like "share everything," "play fair," "clean up your own mess" and "when you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together."

Though it's easy to poke fun at the simplistic message, given the state of our nation and our world, Fulghum's words resonate even more deeply today than it did when he wrote them.