"Early Memories Part Three" or "The Highly Offensive Pooey Kid Outfit"

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.