Not Getting Lost

I think of myself as someone who's absolutely hopeless with direction and orientation when left to my own devices. And yet I've been thinking back lately to a different sort of person than I remember being. This is a story I've often told for its comic effect, and I tell it well, but it's a story with deep roots and wide branches.

When I was in first grade I left class to go to the bathroom. Now this in itself was HUGE. I was horribly shy and humiliated by having to admit to bodily functions. My solution to this problem was to just hold it all day. However, on this particular day I left class and went to the bathroom. When I returned, the class was gone–the teacher, the students–everyone! Just gone. As an adult I can think of many ways to approach this problem: go looking for them, ask the principal, sit down and cry...all very reasonable choices. However, another aspect to my personality as a child was an inability to admit to not knowing something. This was not ego; this was fear. I believed that I inhabited a world of people who all somehow knew everything about everything. And everyone had this amazing knowledge except me. Now, I knew I was smart. Don't get me wrong. But it seemed to me that everyone somehow mysteriously held all this information that was required to get by in the world and I was missing something. I was defective. I thought I needed to hide this truth about myself so that I would look like everyone else. And eventually I figured that since I was a smart girl I'd learn everything I was missing by observation and deduction and in the meantime I just needed to fake it and look the part. No one would ever have to know my secret.

Given my beliefs and my rules for living, my choice was crystal clear. I left school and walked home.

Home was about 5 blocks away from school and both my parents worked. I really didn't have a clear picture of the magnitude of this decision until much later in life when I worked with first graders and saw how tiny they were. At the time, my only concerns were getting in trouble and having people find out my secret. I was absolutely sick with worry over this. I had no idea that it was actually the teacher and the school administration who could get in trouble for this. I found out later that the class had just gone next door to another classroom to watch a film and the teacher had forgotten about me.

Like I said I usually tell this as a funny anecdote about my childhood. But when I think about it, I'm filled with sorrow for the little girl who was so frightened, who allowed her fear to determine everything about her, and yet whose inner strength and courage shone through despite that and who, by succumbing to one fear, overcame another and found her way home.

copyright 2007 J. Autumn Needles