Exchanging ideas with a fellow tweep yesterday, who wondered what she could blog about, and she added “it needs to be about my childhood”, I asked myself: could I write a post about my childhood?
I tend to let words take control and I talk about my current life, my stressful every day routine and my dream of writing, but who really knows anything about my childhood? Not many, if nobody.
This kingergarten memory immediately resurfaced. Could it be a good idea to write about this? Why not? I’m sure people will think it’s actually very cute.
Alright. Let’s take a leap of faith and go for it. Ready? 1… 2… 3…!
I was maybe 4 years old. My hair held above my head looked like a little black palmetto tree. I don’t know why people thought I was Asian for some strange reason, but they always called me Chinese because of this peculiar hairdo. Alright. Small town folks with small ideas, I guess. I had a darker skin complexion, mostly because I played outside a lot so I was tanned, on the contrary of today, where I’ve turned almost… how shall I describe it? See-through?
I always loved jewelry and accessories. The more the better. I downgraded a bit since I have to look “serious” now, but at the prime of my early toddler years, I was literrally covered from head to toe. Pink plastic jewelry was by far my favorite. Matching earrings, necklace, ring, bracelets… Fushia outbrighted everybody else in the room and I couldn’t feel more proud of it. Mama was in the house!! And she brought it on.
That day we had the official school photographer scheduled to come and take the annual class picture. No individual portraits at the time, just a simple group shot. Extremely self-conscious of my glorious appearance, I wanted to make sure that I indeed looked phenomenal, so I took a little bathroom break to check myself out and reclip what could have possibly moved out of place during my previous activities.
The girls’ and boys’ pottie rooms were located very close to each other. It’s actually weird when I think of it now. They were at the end of a small hallway, the boys’ straight ahead, the girls’ on the right. There was a wall on the left, or maybe a closet. I can’t exactly remember. I also recall that there was no door to push or pull to enter. Well, in France, we usually never place doors at the entrance of bathrooms because we think the stall doors are enough already. At least, that’s what I grew up with in every school I attended. Which means that for men’s bathrooms, you have a clear view of the urinals at all times.
I walked toward the girls’ room, facing the boys’ room. All the urinals against the wall, I inadvertently peeked. And what I saw really confused me.
As I returned to the classroom, I didn’t pay more attention to my intriguing discovery and posed like a little star for the picture. Once the day was over, and I left to go home, I ran to my mum and asked her the 1 million dollar question.
“How was school?” she asked.
“Well mummy, I saw something weird today.”
“What was that?”
“I saw boys pee.”
“Ok.”
“And they don’t pee like girls.”
“No?”
“No. I sit down when I pee. They stand up.”
“Ok…”
“And they open little faucets. Pee faucets.”
My mum started laughing. I looked at her, totally serious.
“Why don’t I have a pee faucet too??” I asked. A look of incredulity on my 4 year old face, I stared at her in complete disbelief. What was so funny about what I just said?
Later, I had to retell the story to my dad, who literally died laughing.
So that was it. A faucet. When you think about it, I had made a great observation. And I knew since then that I had an irresistible sense of humor. These things can’t be explained by logic. A child’s innocence is by far the most beautiful thing in the world.
I still smile when I think about it. Priceless.
The Manicheans 