it really wasn't on purpose. it was a misunderstanding. i was just holding it for a friend...i have all of these classic excuses lined up, yet no one has ever heard my shameful story. here goes...
as a kindergartner, i, like many children, enjoyed the daily routine of going to centers: the home center, the listening center, the puzzle center, etc. one of my personal favorites was the math center, not because i liked math, (i have sided with the female stereotype and opted to despise math for my entire life.) but because of the tiny, colorful blocks called "unifix cubes" that we got to play with.
remember these???
i never did any math with them, but we built some magnificently long chains of them winding through our kindergarten classroom. after one such afternoon of chain-building, the teachers called for us to clean up our centers and get back to our seats. another thing compassionate readers should know is that i have a crippling fear of being reprimanded. we cleaned up our chain almost instantaneously, motivated by the terror that goes with "getting your name on the board." i was on my way back to my seat when, much to my dismay, i saw two lonely unifix cubes sitting off to the side, far from their rightful bucket home. panicked by the thought of my teacher noticing that we had left anything behind, i picked up the cubes, one blue and one orange. i put them in my pocket with the intention of returning them to the bucket later, when no one was looking, because god forbid anyone thought i had stolen them. that was my actual thought process.
side note: then and now, practical people everywhere might second-guess my mom's decision to dress a five-year-old in guess jeans. my theory is that she was suffering from that beautiful feeling where a young person feels like they have money for the first time. it's the same phenomenon that allowed me to feel okay about paying full price for target shoes back in 2007 ($24.99, y'all). whatever the case, i have to say that those guess jeans served me well back in kindergarten. too well...maybe better than regular jeans from k-mart would have...because i got home from school that day, reached into my pocket, and pulled out two unifix cubes, one blue and one orange.
imagine the abject terror that i, the child who was afraid of what would happen if all of the cubes weren't picked up, felt when i realized that those cubes had made it all the way home. my heart is racing right now just thinking about it. the back of my neck is sweating. i am 100% telling the truth. and since i was apparently raised to believe that making any mistake could get you scorned, smacked, or both, i chose the safest route: dishonesty and deception.
instead of telling my mom that i had accidentally taken them, instead of sneaking them back into the bucket the next day, instead of throwing them into the garbage and forgetting about them, i hid those two unifix cubes in my closet. FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS. thoughts of my secret being found out consumed me. my most vivid daydreams included my mom finding the cubes, by then stashed safely in an old backpack, and/or my old kindergarten teachers realizing that the two cubes were missing and hunting me down. i don't want to be dramatic, but i'm pretty sure my accidental theft of those two unifix cubes destroyed my childhood. consumed by feelings of guilt, i withdrew into books and avoided forging new human friendships. instead of playing outside with the neighborhood children, i would stand inside that closet of my deepest shame and reach into the front pouch of that retired backpack, checking to see that my secret was still safe.
my most recent memory of panicking over my criminal past was when i was in fourth grade. i don't remember details; i just remember that that was how long it took for the guilt to subside. one day, i guess, i just decided that i was a bad-ass and didn't need to worry about it anymore. thank god for that delusion of grandeur because i really do have the kind of personality that could still be beating myself up for that one.
there you have it: my darkest secret, which has never been shared with another living soul. as i come out of my very literal closet, i thank anyone who has heard my confession in it's entirety and still feels like they could be friends with me in spite of my cheapening the mathematical education of the thousands of kindergartners who came after me. peace be with you.
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