31 Days, 31 Memories - Day 13

[bironic]

13. Elementary School

A.'s parents brought me along to see an animated version of "The Nutcracker" at a movie theater in a town twenty minutes away. Her uncle was a projectionist there and he gave us a garbage bag full of popcorn. After the movie a thunderstorm hit and we waited in the lobby for it to pass, watching through the glass doors in front. One particularly close bolt of lightning produced a cascading peal of thunder that started with a high metallic crack, like the snap of a bent Venetian blind only decibels louder, and finished with a rumble we could feel in the floor. My friend remembered that she'd left her bedroom window slightly open. Her father noticed that I didn't like storms. On the drive back I pointed out what I thought was an anvil cloud, after what I'd seen on a Discovery Channel special on lightning rods.

Comments

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

4th or 5th grade
I had developed a limp of a sudden, and once my mother realised it wasn't just me being whiney, she took me to the doctor. It turned out I had an inflamation in my Achille's heal, developed from over-streching because of flat shoes. Seems I have a slightly short tendon there (which is odd because I'm hyper mobile in all joints).
The "cure" was wearing shoes with heals for about three weeks and after that never completely flat shoes. Fortunately, for my childhood at least, it is possible to by these wedge-shaped thingies to put in shoes for this exact reason.
So, me, at 9 or 10, had to wear heals for three weeks and it went 'clack-clack' when I walked on the hard floors at school. Everyone stared. I mean, a kid that age in heals... I was mortified.
Years later my friend (who I still know despite the fact that I moved away about a year after this happened) told me that no one had believed I had that inflamation; they all thought I was trying to be 'smart'. And not in the good way. I was absurdly hurt by this, even though I must have been in my late teens when she told me.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

Ooh, yes, I hated shoes that clacked and insisted on always getting rubber soles so I could be as unnoticeable as possible.

I wonder... Do you think you were "absurdly" hurt because the time in question was during your childhood, even if the conversation happened years later? -- that the power of the emotion you felt while talking to your friend was like how powerful emotions were in childhood?

[kabal42.livejournal.com]

Me too. I didn't wear hard-heeled - or high-heeled - shoes again until I was in my early twenties *S*

I think that's very probable. When I think back it feels something like me being thrown back into my childhood self with all the vulnerability I felt walking in those shoes and then hearing that remark.