Wednesday morning tears filled the eyes of mothers all over Demopolis as they registered their children for Kindergarten. To the parents it symbolized the first big jump for their children and the start of the growing process.

I have seen this happen with my nephew and will soon see it happen with my niece. Once children go off to Kindergarten a certain fun phase of their childhood ends for the parents and family. As they go to school and make new friends and learn new things some of the simpler things everyone enjoyed before begin to take a back seat. There is a constant struggle by the children to try to grow up as fast as they can and an opposite force from the parents to encourage them to stay young.

For those of you preparing to head off to kindergarten, take full advantage of this one wonderful year of school. You will never know how many people there are who would love to trade places with you.

I am one of them. There are several practices that kindergartners are encouraged to put into play that most working people long for in their daily life. Probably the biggest asset of kindergarten is naptime. If there were such a thing as naptime in the professional world I am convinced worker morale would improve 100 percent. A funny thing happens to grown people after they fill themselves at lunch. Our eyelids gain about 50 pounds and it takes all the strength we can muster to keep open. Oh, what we wouldn’t give for 30 minutes on the couch!

The most frustrating thing about the lack of nap time in the professional world is the knowledge that right down the road there are hundreds of kindergartners taking their designated snooze time for granted. To a five or six year old who is keyed up on the Hershey Bar or Chocolate pudding his or her beloved mother packed in their lunch that day nap-time is a roadblock. They can’t imagine why their teacher forces them to pull out that wretched mat every day and break up whatever fun they were having before.

Here is a message for all of you wired up kidney-gartners: Take advantage of all the sleep you can while you can. It is going to go away sooner than you think!

There are also several little things you will grow to miss about the carefree first year of school when it is over. I for one would love to take time out of my busy day to finger paint, color with crayons or make a house with glue and Popsicle sticks. This is really the only time you are going to have to enjoy arts and crafts for most of the day. Before you know it crayons and paints will be replaced with keyboards, research papers and homework.

Kindergarten policies are also something that seem to fade in the later years. Pleases and thank you’s seem to eventually be replaced by now’s and get out of my way’s. Another policy of the early years of education that I miss is “Don’t talk to strangers.” When people go to work, especially in the field of journalism, talking to strangers is part of the job and can be an unpleasant one. In the world of news if you are talking to someone you are not familiar with it is probably because of some notorious act they have committed.

Most of this advice means nothing to you future kindergartners now, but I promise you it will in the near future.

Just so I will not feel like I have done you no good at all I will leave you with some advice that you can understand and use right away. No matter how good it looks and no matter how intense the dares may get do not eat the glue! Your reputation for the rest of your scholastic career can be defined by whether or not you are the kid who ate glue in kindergarten. People will remember it until the day you graduate high school.

Good luck class of 2018!