My Childhood, a.k.a A Series of Unfortunate Traumas.

It has been suggested to me that I had a bit of a difficult childhood.  It’s true. I stumbled from one horrific incident to the next. I am unsure how this series of terrible events impacted my family – outside of that one time, during a doctor’s visit, when I accused my mother of throwing me down the stairs.  I am pretty sure how that impacted my mother. And how that impacted my butt later.

But there is one event that stands out from the mingling crowd of esteem crushing moments:

The day I went to school with no pants on.

You’ve dreamed it, I’ve lived it.

During the Kindergarten to Grade Two period, my family lived in Kingston, Ontario where my sister and I were tended during the day by Mrs. MacDonald.  She was not an attractive woman inside or out,  and often seemed less than interested in having children around despite having two of her own.  I attended Kindergarten only in the afternoon, and in the morning I was often outside, entertaining myself.  That morning, I was puddle jumping. Having a blast going from puddle to puddle, leaping in the air and coming down with a terrific splash. It was exhilarating, until I misjudged that one puddle – not by distance, but by depth. And it was not so much a puddle as a ditch of some sort.

Needless to say, Mrs. MacDonald was less than thrilled with the sight that greeted her. Forty pounds of wet, sorry, deflated kid. She threw my clothes in the dryer as her children and my sister  were arriving home for lunch.   As lunch ended and we prepared to go back to school, I was left to assemble my outfit from the clothes in the dryer – the Edge of Night was on, you see.

This is the point in the story where I remind you all that I was four.

I put on my turtleneck, and my super thick tights. And my sneakers. Points to those who can tell me what item I forgot.

I WAS FOUR.

Off I headed with my sister, up the hill and then over a few blocks to the school.

Let me point out that if I was four, my sister was six.  Six is definitely old enough to know about pants. If you haven’t learned the Rule of Pants by six, what have you been doing?

It was at the top of the hill that I achieved clarity. In one hideous instant I truly saw myself for the first time since I put my clothes on.

 NO PANTS. Look down at  your legs…NO PANTS!!! Jesus God in Heaven EVERYONE HAS PANTS! Where are my pants where  are my pants ohhhh my pants my pants my pants death take me now…

It is quite a thing, friends, to experience that feeling of the world falling out from under you when you are only four. To have a frontal lobe well developed enough to know how this pants issue is going to affect your social standing in Kindergarten. To know that as a four year old you are now marked forever as a failure BECAUSE YOU COULD NOT EVEN PUT YOUR OWN PANTS ON!!

I flipped.  I wheezed out  something about the lack of pants to my sister.

“We can’t go back now. We’ll be late.” I knew my sister. She was rule bound and she meant business. Still, I tried to argue my case, somewhat hysterically. A quick backhand to the chops settled the debate and we continued on to school.

So how did my day go? I’d like to think that this day help set a pattern for me. One where I learned to stop caring about what others think of me and the things I do. Where I stood at the front of the class, pantsless and proud, and declared my individuality to them all!

But it didn’t.

I spent the afternoon trying to pretend my turtle neck was a mini-skirt, all the while accumulating  a therapist’s-second-car’s worth of issues that would haunt me well into adulthood.  But on the upside, it’s like lightning striking: once it’s happened, the odds of it happening again are significantly reduced.

Right?