Now this is a very early memory, it's a memory from when I
went to nursery school, so I must've been about 3, which is a pretty early
memory, and a shit one to be fair (quite literally). I'd have liked my first
memory to have been something nice like riding upon the back of a tiger or
dancing round a lamp-post with Mr Strong from the Mr Men, he was always my
favourite due to him being red. I liked red. However, I do remember playing
Manic Miner on my ZX Spectrum and actually jumping whenever I pressed the jump
key or “space bar” as it became known in later years. I firmly believed that it
would help the little pixelated bastard jump that little bit higher. That
memory was very early but it’s a bit hard to write a story based around a
misguided reflex action.
Anyway, I digress, in nursery the day always ended with
story time where we were forced to sit on the floor and listen to the nursery
nurse spin some magical tale. One particular afternoon halfway through story
time, I got a bit bored with “The Big Man, The Magic Stick and The Donkey” and
just decided to have a massive poo in my pants. This wasn’t diarrhoea or a
stomach bug, it was a good old fashioned huge turd. I think it may have been
provoked by the story being about donkeys, which are actually quite boring. I
didn’t even really like seaside donkeys, they’re just too bloody slow, it’d
definitely be better to ride a tiger at Blackpool, a tiger would be quick. I
really wasn't too bothered about pooing myself, it was just something to do to
take my mind off donkeys (even the Magic Stick or the Big Man wasn’t enough to
make up for the donkeys) and with story time being toward the end of the day, I
could have probably lasted until home time. Unfortunately during story time it
was the number one golden rule that we had to sit cross legged. If you’ve ever
tried to sit cross legged with a pant full of poo you’ll know that it isn’t an
easy thing to do, there’s lots of compression and squidging and general mess
making. 
So, my smelly deposit was discovered and I was escorted to
get changed via the toilet. My pants and trousers were removed, placed into a
carrier bag and at this point, the worst thing ever was bestowed upon me. Not happy with dragging me out of story time in front of everyone, these sadistic bastards had to
punish me further and gave me brown corduroy trousers to wear. They also, for
some inexplicable reason, changed my jumper and gave me something that could
only ever be worn by a golfer with extremely poor dress sense. I don’t
understand the change of jumper, I can’t really see many scenarios where the
poo would actually defy gravity and go up my jumper, unless of course I was
pooing small alien poo worms that attempted to home in and burrow into my
brain. At the time, probably due to the fact that I was but a nipper, I don't
think I made the connection between the shit brown trousers I’d been given and
the actual shit brown trousers in the carrier bag I had to take home. Looking
back, I can’t help but think that the nursery staff had devised this whole
“pooey kid” outfit as a symbolic gesture purely made to embarrass the
unfortunate child. Kind of like when they used to hang people in medieval times
and then put the body up in a gibbet as a warning. Or when Hitler made Jewish
people wear yellow stars, or if a mad bad alien dictator landed and made French
people wear stripey jumpers, berets and onions. This outfit was created by the
nursery head so that as soon as a child emerged from the toilet wearing it,
from a single glance anyone would know that said child had shat themselves and
should be publicly ridiculed.
The main thing I do remember, the one abiding memory, is
walking home wearing the brown corduroy trousers and thinking "I hate
these trousers". Looking back, at the very young age I was, I actually
recognised how terrible the trousers were. This wasn’t shame from pooing
myself, all good men poo themselves at some point, this was genuine dislike for
the horrific trousers.
I believe this tale actually proves something though, this
tale proves that style and taste are something that you’re born with. It also
probably proves that it is possible to write a story about a misguided reflex
action as pooing myself during story time could probably be classed as that. It
also proves that donkeys are fucking boring.
