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Apr. 20th, 2004 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutI found out recently that my mother has no memory of one of my earliest traumatic experiences.
Well, that's perhaps to be expected; she wasn't present for any but the late aftermath. Besides, Mom's memory is famously flaky. (It's the only part of her that can be called that in any conscience.)
I was living in University housing, so I couldn't have been older than four. I was playing around outside with my best friend from next door. We found a pile of coke bottles abandoned back by the parking lot.
In the days before returnables laws, what were a pile of glass bottles useful for to a pair of four year olds? It was a sunny day -- summer? -- and the glass was pretty in the bright sunlight.
It was prettier when it was broken.
I guarantee that smashing them up was not my idea. Such was never my style.
Coke bottles are rugged glass, though. They break into big shards, not small glittery fragments. So we picked up the big pieces and smashed them, too. In the process, we inflicted dozens of cuts large and small on our hands. I don't remember us noticing, though, until the bottle carnage was finished.
I remember what seemed like dozens of band-aids on fingers. And at least one large (but shallow) gash across my palm. It was her mother, not mine, who bandaged us up, scolding us sternly in the process. Not that we needed to be by that point. We had managed to freak ourselves out with our own blood and pain by then. This was just an added layer of shame.
It may or may not be coincidence that I've had a thing about cuts on my hands ever since. I tend to faint dramatically whenever it happens. It was even written on my hospital chart once.
Well, that's perhaps to be expected; she wasn't present for any but the late aftermath. Besides, Mom's memory is famously flaky. (It's the only part of her that can be called that in any conscience.)
I was living in University housing, so I couldn't have been older than four. I was playing around outside with my best friend from next door. We found a pile of coke bottles abandoned back by the parking lot.
In the days before returnables laws, what were a pile of glass bottles useful for to a pair of four year olds? It was a sunny day -- summer? -- and the glass was pretty in the bright sunlight.
It was prettier when it was broken.
I guarantee that smashing them up was not my idea. Such was never my style.
Coke bottles are rugged glass, though. They break into big shards, not small glittery fragments. So we picked up the big pieces and smashed them, too. In the process, we inflicted dozens of cuts large and small on our hands. I don't remember us noticing, though, until the bottle carnage was finished.
I remember what seemed like dozens of band-aids on fingers. And at least one large (but shallow) gash across my palm. It was her mother, not mine, who bandaged us up, scolding us sternly in the process. Not that we needed to be by that point. We had managed to freak ourselves out with our own blood and pain by then. This was just an added layer of shame.
It may or may not be coincidence that I've had a thing about cuts on my hands ever since. I tend to faint dramatically whenever it happens. It was even written on my hospital chart once.
