The real story is the one I never used.
I always made some shit up when I wanted to skip an after-school commitment.
“I didn’t make it all the way to Hebrew School because a drug dealer came up to me and offered me pot on 83rd Street. What, why are you mad, I thought you’d want me to come right home!”
“I LOVE ice skating, I want to go but I’m not feeling well! I just threw up. I’m so upset, I really want to go! Mom, why are you checking the bathroom, I flushed the throw-up. It was just a little but I feel so sick!”
When something actually happened on my way to piano, I didn’t think enough of it to use it, or even repurpose it some other day.
I was 11. On my walk from home to 86th Street, where my piano teacher lived and taught, a white-haired man with a paunch started walking with me.
I’d say “old man” because I thought he was an old man, but he could’ve been in his late 50s. That’s plenty old to an 11-year-old.
He was perfectly nice. He asked my name, where I was going, and if I enjoyed piano.
Every kid is told not to talk to strangers, but I never had it in me to tell someone, “Don’t talk to me.”
(Even now, I barely get up that kind of nerve for the Greenpeace kids on the sidewalk. I told one just today, “I’m not going to stop and talk to you, but have a good day.” I felt very assertive. I usually just pretend I’m on a phone call or can’t hear them through my earbuds.)
I kept thinking the man was going to turn, but he stuck with me.
By 84th Street, he’d been by my side for 2 blocks. That’s a long way for a stranger to keep walking with you.
I told him, “Well, I have to stop in this store.”
We’d just reached Menash, one of my favorite stationery-and-more stores. I went there for new 3-ring binders, pristine Caran D’Ache colored pencil sets, Matchbox cars when a boy in my class had a birthday, Smurfs, and Hello Kitty everything. There was a whole section that even had the lesser Hello Kitty spinoffs like Little Twin Stars and My Melody. Pencil sharpeners, pencil cases, drinking cups, comb sets, the works. When I smell bubblegum eraser, I think of Menash.
This was where we should’ve parted ways. Instead, the man said, “I’ll wait for you out here.”
I lurked in Menash a while. Tried out florescent highlighters and Rolling Writer pens on the little scratch pads. Looked at Smurfs, hoping to find a new one I didn’t already own.
Now, I’d be late for piano and my teacher, Paul, would be a little mad. (He never got a lot mad, except one time when he lost it and said I was acting like a real brat, which I was. I didn’t want to practice Sonatina in C by Clementi, the piece I’d begged him to teach me.)
The man was still standing there, as promised, when I came out of the store.
“Ready?” he asked.
My memory after that is fuzzy. I can’t remember how I escaped his company. I think I darted past him and ran the rest of the way to the safety of Paul’s grand, full-block building with the fountain in the courtyard.
I know I felt satisfied that I’d lost my tail, so he couldn’t wait and find me after my lesson.
I wasn’t thinking “child molester” or “pervert” or “stranger danger.” I was only thinking, “I don’t like this weird man walking with me. I don’t feel like talking to him and answering his dumb grownup questions.”
When I told Paul why I was late, he was freaked out. I thought he was overreacting. Either he insisted on walking me home, or I told him he didn’t need to and he dropped it.
I don’t think about that story a lot, because “I might have almost gotten molested” isn’t much of a story. But I really could’ve used it to get out of piano.
Now you.
Did you make shit up to get out of things when you were a kid?
Have any memories that recently came back to you, that you realized you glossed over or shrugged off but should’ve freaked you out?
TELL ME IN THE COMMENTS.
Thanks for expressing this Laura. It took seeing a few others share their stories for me to add mine here. I didn’t acknowledge what happened to me till a couple of decades later. Had always assumed it was my fault.
Was wondering round some luscious school grounds with my younger sisters (me, age 10). Stumbled on some kind of science block and an old man approaches all friendly. Trained to be polite to elders i make cross eyes at my sisters when they are cheeky, and we end up following him to a quadrangle. I still cringe at the fact that he asked the most cliched thing possible -well we were only kids, what the heck.. He asked whether we wanted to see some baby rabbits. >.< Well the rabbits did exist and we did get to see them. But it was the moment he came up behind me an hugged me in an uninvited and wrap right around me creepy way that I remember telling my sister we had to go *now* and we bolted. thank god they picked up that tone in my voice and that they trusted me. I shoved that icky memory right down a plug hole in my memory……it screamed of "doh dunce.. fool… your fault.." Cant believe it took me till my thirties to realise I'd done nothing wrong and shake that feeling off finally.
The first time I ever went to Italy I was probably about 9 or 10 and I was on the very packed subway with my dad. There was only one seat available when we got on so I was ushered into it, sitting with the window to my left and a stranger on my right. Across from me was a dirty old man. Literally he was dirty…possibly homeless. And the aisle was packed so I could just see my dad through the throngs of commuters. Not that it mattered, my dad wasn’t the kind of parent who looked out for his kids.
But anyway, I was SUPER shy and being shoved off into a seat on an Italian subway was terrifying for me in and of itself. But then the fucking dirty old man started to rub his leg up against mine. I tried to ignore him but could see him smiling and staring, waiting for my reaction. My heart was racing and I got really scared because I felt trapped, and then he started really pushing his foot and lower leg against mine, crushing my little ankle against the wall of the subway car. It hurt like fuck and I got tears in my eyes from being scared and being in pain, which just egged him on. It went on for what felt like forever, until we stopped at a major station, the train emptied out and I followed my dad away from Dirty Ol’ Bastard. I so wish I could go back to that time, with a little more courage, and punch that predatory turd in the balls.
Things are always way more entertaining in retrospect!!! Yay for sharing pervert stories!
Ugh… pervert stories indeed. As difficult and gross as it all is, I agree that it can be funny to think about how I’d handle these things knowing what I know now. Something similar to your story happened to my sister in a theater, and my awesome grandmother gave the guy a public verbal smackdown. Her gumption has helped me bring my assertiveness out, too.
Imagine you’re a guy and you’re driving your car through a suburban neighborhood looking for a friend’s address as you haven’t been to the house before. You get a bit disoriented, wondering if you’re on the right street. You see two young girls, maybe ages seven or eight, playing in front of one of the homes you pass on the street. You pull over, roll down the window, motion to the girls to come over which they do. “Am I on Maple Street?” you ask. “No, that’s two street over,” they point. You thank them, roll up the window and off you go.
Moments later a squad car pulls you over, the officer orders you out of the car, requires an id, searches you and grills you about what you’re doing in the neighborhood. A call to your friend clears things up.
It’s sad that it’s come to this and maybe it won’t always be this way. For now, though, it would better to avoid this kind of contact which unfortunate follow up has happened to others and almost, I suppose, might’ve happened to me.
Lest I be misunderstood, I mean to say that it’s sad that children are at risk of kidnapping, molestation or worse, even at Walden Pond, one of my favorite places to hike and swim.
My alarm would shriek every morning before school in Massachusetts. I’d wake me out of a dead sleep and I’d open one eye to look at the uniform hanging on the door handle. Sometimes I swear it had icicles on it.
My dad would keep the house just warm enough to keep the pipes from freezing. By the time I woke up, though I couldn’t feel my legs because of the weight of the six blankets I’d burrow under, I was finally warm. The last thing I wanted to do was get out of bed, take a shower and leave the house. My hair would freeze in the time it took to get from the house to the bus. As in, I could crunch it. I’m not sure why I didn’t dry it first.
On the day I didn’t want to go to school I ran the hot water for a while and brought our old-school mercury thermometer to my mom, telling her I had a fever.
She said “I don’t think you have a fever. You’re temperature is 53 degrees.”
Dang it.
I learned what a penis is by reading a Jewel lyric out-loud to my friend and saying “pen-is” instead of “peen-is”, and she was like, “WAIT!?!? You don’t know what a penis is?” Sadly, I didn’t. Never saw one. Still haven’t 😉
– Every kid is told not to talk to strangers, but I never had it in me to tell someone, “Don’t talk to me.”-
This is a horrifying truth for a lot of us. That tension between safety and being ‘polite.’
Naturally, I blame my mother…unless she’s reading this…then I blame my Grandmother.
Agreed – being assertive and setting strong boundaries is not polite. In some ways, the ways we’re taught to be “feminine” make us vulnerable. Good point!
Eeeek! I’m so glad you got away from that guy.
I was extra skilled at making up bullshit to get extensions on homework deadlines, when I had really just spend my previous evening watching Friends and singing along to Celine Dion hits while dancing in front of the bathroom mirror. Teenagers, dude.
More seriously, though, it’s so important for kids to know how to identify predatory behavior, and to have practice being assertive and getting away, like you did.
My sister and I witnessed a friend get molested at Walden Pond when we were 9 years old. It could have easily been me — or all three of us — instead. We were walking in a straight line along the path, and the guy jumped out in front of me (from behind some greenery) with his arms stretched out, trying to stop us. Remarkably, I managed to walk right around him without pausing, and my sister followed close behind. We waited for our friend a little ways down the path… watching from afar. I wish we had known more. Known how to scream for help. Known even that a scream was warranted. We just waited.
Eeeek again. I guess most of us have at least one story like yours, and like mine.
I just watched an amazing assertiveness/consent/anti-rape training for girls and boys in Kenya and Malawi. If you’re interested, check it out at NoMeansNoWorldwide.org.
Great post, Laura!
Haha *spent, not spend. Late-evening-typo-syndrome for me.
Ha! MY ENTIRE EFFING MARRIAGE! (No, I am not being an old person using all caps for emphasis. I am actually text-screaming.)
So good to hear from you, Laura???? The snapshot is PRICELESS. (OK this time I am being an old person. Even I know it would be weird to scream over a photo…and if you know me at all you know I do a mortifyingly lot of things I don’t know are weird.????) xo