ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. 

These are the things I learned:

      Share everything

       Play fair

      Don’t hit people

       Put things back where you found them

       Clean up your own mess

       Don’t take things that aren’t yours

       Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody

       Wash your hands before you eat

       FLUSH

       Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you

       Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some

       Take a nap every afternoon

           When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together

       Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that  Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the   little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

          Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. 

          Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.