Skool daze…

This morning, my four-year-old niece got out of her bed, wiped the sleep from her eyes and pulled on her school uniform for only about the 17th time in her life.

However, today was different.

Because, while the last 16 times she has put on her brand new navy-blue pinafore, it has been for the purpose of rocking about the living room or dancing around the garden, today it was not donned for the craic.

Showtime…

Yes, this morning was the morning that the wee-est wee doll I know started school.

Jesus, oh. Where does it go?

Surely even the sandman himself scratches his head over that one.

Anyway, let us return to the lady of the moment.

Today was indeed the primary school debut for wee LC – whose full name will remain hidden to protect her from would-be child thieves… and me from security breach reprisals from her would-be brother-killing mother.

Looking at the family WhatsApp group this morning would have brought a warm tear to even the iciest eye.

Early on, my sister sent in a video showing LC standing out the front of her house, waving to camera saying, “Hello everybody, it is my first day at school.”

What followed was a stream of pictures which can only be described as a cascade of unbearable cuteness, which, naturally, prompted an outpouring of emoji-laden love from the whole family.

“Wee cutie. Looks so happy,” said my bro. “Looks so like you (my sister)!”

“Aww my god,” sobbed my aul doll. Happy wee woman. This is amazing!”

“Unreal! Cuteness levels through the roof. Tiochaidh ar adorable,” I said, to my own, and I think isolated, amusement.

At the time of writing, I do not know how she got on, but I hope she had a first day that makes a second seem like a not-all-that-daunting prospect.

I mind my first days at school.

I was a jittering, nervous, intestinally-twisted wreck.

Some children are socially fearless. They are like tiny, snottery, maneless lions.

Today, before the bell had struck break-time, at least one wee boy in Omagh will have walked straight up to his teacher, pointed out the unmissableness of their big, agonisingly obvious facial misfortune, before then punching a fellow pupil in the teeth, and making friends with the rest of the class.

Others, however, will have spent most of the day trying to wish themselves out of existence.

That is just the way of it: Some weins are mad, courageous and bold, while others are timid, shy and odd.

I, to my great pain at the time, belonged to the shier half of the tiny-human race.

When people talk about their fond memories of their earliest schooldays, I wait for the last to finish speaking, crush down my cigarette and laugh a low, rueful laugh.

“I’ll tell you about my first days at St Conor’s, boys,” I say, as my company either begin to whimper or leave.

Because, when I try to peer back to that period through my rose-tinted glasses, the lenses fall out and shatter upon the toilet tiles – at which I spent a lot of my first school days staring. For it was in those toilets, among the ammonia-heavy atmosphere, that I spent so many hours of my first September at school, crippled with stomach-stabbing, gut-screwing, bowel-busting, retention-testing nerves.

I was an extreme example of what most people’s grannies would describe as ‘a nervous wee critter’. No pair of drawers were safe when they were on McElhatton’s arse as he walked through the school gates.

Anyway, enough wallowing in my childhood pain, and enough lamenting my naturally cowardly constitution.

This column is a big-up to LC, and hopefully she will read it in years to come when she is an even bigger big girl.

We salute and love you, wee doll. And let us hope ye spend more time in the class – and less in the bogs – than your spineless uncle Emmet.