2/20
“Yes,” I replied. Not because it did hurt
but because I thought a strong affirming ‘yes’ was
the answer my father wanted to hear.
“Right,” he said, “we can sort that out. If you agree
to go into hospital I’ll get you that Corgi police van you want.”
At three years old this seemed a great exchange deal to me. I
lose a bit of loose skin for a toy van that had a lifting rear
door. I duly agreed, and that’s how I ended up without
a foreskin. I’m sure you can see now why I’m
glad I had the operation.
It’s odd but another defining point in my early life also happened whilst I was in the bath. Again my father was over by the sink, but this time he wasn’t looking at me. I’d been playing with my toy ships, pretending that my knees were islands when I got the desperate need to do a number 2. I didn’t know what to do. When you’re stuck in a bath it’s not easy to run to the toilet. Perhaps I should have told my father my predicament and let him come up with a solution, but I didn’t. Instead I plopped my load in the bath. Luckily it was only a little plop, more like a large pellet than a faeces, but this still begged the problem of what I was going to do with it.
I was savvy enough to know that I couldn’t tell my father what I’d done, so I came up with an ingenious solution. I got hold of an empty bottle of Matey bubble bath and popped the pellet into the bottle. Then I held the bottle aloft and said to my father, “Look dad, there’s a stone in this bottle.”
He was quite surprised and came over to inspect it. I realised my plan hadn’t worked when his face turned red and he gave me a slap.
