When you reach a certain age in the middle years of your life (Why yes, I am pretty optimistic about how long I'll be gracing this earth. I mean, if I can't die until my credit cards are paid off I might just live forever) you start to look back and start to look at stuff with the clarity of age and experience.
Such was my morning yesterday.
In order to explain this 43 year break down in realization, I have to go back and explain my early grade school years.
I went to a tiny parochial grade school in the Flint area of Michigan. It was a two room school, my father was the principal and the 5th-8th grade teacher. (Until I was twelve I thought everyone went to schools like mine.) I attended this school from kindergarten until fourth grade and all those years I had exactly one teacher: we'll call her Mrs. Smith. (Not even remotely her real name.)
Mrs. Smith wrangled grades k-4 (roughly 30 students or more most years) with no breaks other than 3 short recesses (Which is when we had gym class with my dad. But that's a story for another day. I will say we managed, and entire school, to have recess with no supervising adults other than my father, who was generally busy keeping score for some gym related sport inside or outside the school. And no one died.) totaling less than an hour a day, during which time she was expected to eat her lunch, correct papers, and make any parental phone calls she had to. Oh, and also lesson plan for five grades.
I should also mention the following points:
1) 90% of the time she and my father were the only two adults in the building.
2) There was no teachers' lounge. Teachers had to use the same bathrooms the kids did.
3) It was a far more delicate age when teachers simply did not admit to having personal needs such as bathrooms breaks, (Or coffee. I never ever saw Mrs. Smith drink coffee during the day. I know my father did, but in the privacy of maybe the church office when no one was looking. If I were still teaching, you can bet I'd have a coffee pot brewing in the classroom all day long.)
There. Now you're caught up.
The rules of the classroom were if Mrs. Smith was called out of the room for any reason, she would appoint someone to be in charge. This person was generally a fourth grader, but sometimes it could be a younger person. The kid would stand at the front of the room and if anyone talked, they would right that kid's name on the board.
That kind of power can corrupt a kid. There was a lot of bargaining and graft that went on. A kid in charge could write some one's name on the board for any reason...and blackmail that kid's Twinkies right out of his or her lunch.
The kid in charge could also let other students go use the bathroom. We didn't have bathroom passes, it was a two room school with one hall. It wasn't like we could wander or get lost. And with less than 50 students in the building, everyone knew where everyone else belonged.
So on this day that tickled my memory so many years later, Mrs. Smith had left the room for something and left a kid in charge. It's not important who that kid was, because it wasn't me. This blog is about me. So the kid in charge is of no consequence to the story other than to say this kid allowed me to go to the restroom while Mrs. Smith was out of the room.
Keep in mind for this next part, I was seven, MAYBE eight years old.
I walk into the bathroom. There are two stalls and one sink in there. (Did I mention this was a TINY school?) One of the stall doors is closed. No biggie. I figured it was an upper grade girl or something.
And then I heard a voice.
"Sarah?"
This was no girl. This was a grown up in the bathroom. For a moment I looked around, possibly wondering if God was truly a woman.
But no, it was my teacher.
My TEACHER... IN THE BATHROOM!
This concept to a little kid is foreign. Sure, by the age of seven kids know what bathrooms are all about. But very few honestly believe grown ups like teachers and pastors and presidents actually use them. So to be in there with my teacher...that was startling...and for her to talk to me...
This may have been when I began having issues with people in public restrooms.
"Yes?" I asked in a tiny voice.
"Will you please go get Mrs. Jones?"
Mrs. Jones was the school secretary who worked maybe six hours a week. On that day she just happened to be in.
Forgetting why I was in there in the first place, I left the bathroom, went to the office, told Mrs. Jones (Not her real name) that Mrs. Smith needed her in the bathroom and then went back to the classroom.
And this is when my idiocy began.
See, the brain can only process information as it can relate it to its own experience. For example: If an alien ship landed on my front yard and Martians walked out my brain would have trouble understanding what was happening and would then define the event in terms related to something I'd already experienced. But if a space ship landed on the front yard of say, someone who had already been probed by aliens, then he or she would be able to absorb the scene and fully understand what it meant.
Such was the case with my seven year old brain. I had no idea why one woman would need another woman in a school bathroom. And so, my brain explained the scene in terms I could grasp.
Clearly, Mrs. Smith was stuck on the toilet.
Not only did this seem plausible to me, this was, in my head, the complete God's honest truth that I felt HAD TO BE SHARED.
Which I did, with my best friend, DJ (sort of his first name.) DJ pretty much went through life thinking I was a moron, while I was convinced we were best buddies. So he blew me off. So I turned my other best friend, Kayla (not her name) who was far more sophisticated than I was, and therefore not at all interested in bathroom stuff. So, hoping to get a rise out of SOMEONE at this shocking news I had, I told my other sort of best friend who was by far the most gullible person I knew, Debbie. (Oh yeah...that's her real name.) And Debbie and I had a good giggle over the FACT that Mrs. Smith was so stuck on the toilet she needed Mrs. Jones to help her up.
But here's the thing: Almost 42 years later I was putting on my make up and this scene flashed through my brain and, having now been a WOMAN for quite some time, the facts of the event as they probably really were played out in my head.
Yeah, see, Mrs. Smith wasn't stuck on the toilet.
Nope. Mrs. Smith most likely had gotten caught needing some punctuation protection and since this was a parochial school in the 70's, there was no dispenser of such and thus she needed Mrs. Jones to come in and help her out.
And because I'm an idiot...it took me more than four decades to realize that.
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