Early childhood generates some of our most powerful memories. We remember the first instances of joy, disgust, fright and love.
In a matter of years we find ourselves subject to greater emotional depths, and our memories correspondingly become more complex.
I’d argue that as soon as we’re old enough to form a truly vivid memory, we’re probably old enough to suffer embarrassment.
After all, complex memory is an act of self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is what makes embarrassment possible. For instance: at some point, public nudity transforms from a trivial concern into a matter of life and death.
Here are three vivid early memories, all from my primary school years, ranked from barely embarrassing to majorly mortifying.
A Long Weight on April Fools’ Day
It’s April 1st and the teachers are playing tricks on the children. Or, to be more precise, they seem to be using the children to amuse one another.
We are the Go-Betweens, in the L P Hartley sense of the word, hurrying through the corridors of the school on surreal errands.
One child is dispatched to ask a teacher for ‘a glass hammer and some rubber nails’. I am sent to the deputy headmaster to request ‘a long weight’. I imagine another classmate was encouraged to fetch ‘a can of striped paint.’
The activity is good natured, like almost everything I experience at the schoo; the teasing is gentle. It may even have been a little learning activity – what better way to understand April Fools’ Day than to be pranked yourself?
We were supposed to return with nothing, but these objects sat in my mental inventory for decades ever after
Looking back, I feel little in the way of residual embarrassment, although certain details have acquired the gauzy quality of a dream.
Did I have a sneaking suspicion that the quest for ‘long weight’ was a ruse? Was there a slightly dutiful feeling of having to play dumb and play along?
I’m not even certain that I was the child sent to retrieve the non-existent object. Maybe I watched the incident unfold.
I think it really happened. I have a memory of waiting outside an office, and a teacher saying, “I think you’ve waited long enough, don’t you?”
What has endured with greater clarity is a pair of mental images commemorating these fictional tools.
I visualise the glass hammer as something akin to a perspex mallet. The rubber nails are soft, plump and orange.
The long weight is perhaps 30cm, with a hole in the top, as if it were the longest specimen from a batch of six. It would come from a set of weights ordered by size, in a similar fashion to an array of measuring spoons.
It’s funny, we were supposed to return from our little errands with nothing, but these objects have sat in my mental inventory for decades ever after.
Embarrassment rating: 2/5
No pain, no game
It’s break time. Maybe it’s winter – cold enough that we children are wearing our coats on the front playground of the school.
I’m with my best friend and we’re interacting – calling it ‘playing’ might be a stretch – with a couple of girls from the year below.
One of these girls is Kim. She has long dark mousy hair, a red coat, and a faintly comical surname. I find her annoying and wish she would go away and leave us in peace.
In an attempt to encourage her to leave us alone, I take hold of Kim’s coat hood and, standing behind her, I swing her around and around. I pirouette on the spot, gathering speed as she totters in a circle, arms flailing in front of her, unable to extricate herself from the situation.
After a few seconds I let go of Kim’s hood, without really considering the consequences. The momentum carries her forward, she loses her balance and stumbles a few paces, before landing flat on her face on the playground floor.
I’m a little aghast at the sight of Kim prone on the concrete. I recognise instantly that she holds my fate in her hands.
I’m not going to have to apologise to Kim for treating her like a hammer at a track-and-field event
After informing me about her plans she marches away, tearful but resolved, to inform a teacher of my perfidy.
I’m a comparatively quiet child and rarely in trouble, at school or at home. This development therefore induces a moment of gut-wrenching panic.
I have no experience of this situation and therefore no idea what happens next.
Making some hasty calculations, I decide my best strategy is to appear completely unconcerned, so that I can at least save face in front of my best friend and the junior girls.
I need to create the impression that I planned to throw Kim to the ground, knowing full well the price I might pay for it. Play it cool.
If I could have lit a cigarette at this point, I would.
I don’t have to wait long until I’m summoned from the playground. I try to make my way to the gallows with studied nonchalance.
Entering the school, I find myself interviewed by an unfamiliar young teacher. My mild panic is probably evident.
She does most of the talking, and rather than making excuses, I quickly apologise for the mistake and try to appear as contrite as possible.
As the interrogation winds down, my anxiety starts to melt into something warmer: hope.
I realise that nothing bad is going to happen.
I’m not going to be kept inside for the rest of breaktime. It doesn’t even seem like I’m going to have to apologise to Kim for treating her like a hammer at a track-and-field event.
And if that’s how this plays out, then I can make up whatever story I want about this bracing encounter with authority.
On my release into the playground, I find my three peers waiting for me by the door.
“What happened?” they ask breathlessly, surprised that I appear neither tearful nor humbled.
Eager to burnish my Teflon image – especially to Kim, who ratted me out – I saunter straight past them, smirking and dropping the coolest bon mot I can call to mind:
“No pain, no game.”
I was, at most, eight years old – maybe younger. In my head, this little eggcorn made total sense; I assumed it meant something like, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword.
It seemed exactly the kind of rakish thing a playground outlaw might say, and none of my compatriots was in a position to correct me.
Secretly, I was both chastened and relieved to have gotten away with my misdemeanour, but I was happy to create the impression that no teacher held any fear for me.
If Steve McQueen had spotted me across the playground that afternoon, he would have shaken his head with quiet admiration. Wow, nothing bothers this guy…
Embarrassment rating: 3/5
The Slowest Lifeboat
The class is visiting a local RNLI centre to learn more about the lifeboat service.
We’re clustered around a boat, housed in a large shed. The doors are thrown open to the beach.
We’ve been listening to the manager explain how things work at the station, and now we’ve reached the Q&A section of the visit.
Throughout the crowd, eager hands are raised. How many people can fit in the boat? How many lives have they saved? How cold is it out at sea?
It seems like everyone has a question for the lifeboat station manager, and I’m suddenly gripped by an urgent, irrational need to have one of my own.
I’m one of the swottier kids, so maybe I feel there’s an expectation that I’ll be a reliable participant. Whatever the reason, I feel a strong desire to pose an insightful question.
The station manager calls on the remaining classmate with his hand up.
“How fast can it go?” asks the boy, gesturing at the lifeboat.
“Up to about 32 knots,” replies the station master.
Sensing an easy opportunity, I raise my hand and am instantly called upon. I narrow my eyes.
“How slow can it go?” I inquire, with a mixture of pride and relief.
There’s a moment of silence in the shed as the station manager smirks at me. Then he replies.
“It can stop.”
Cue: delighted laughter from adults and children alike. I silently wish for the tide to wash right into the shed and carry me out into the North Sea.
Embarrassment rating: 5/5
