Splinter Removal

Teacher with tweezers:

"Stand on that chair in the light."

Painful splinters out.

I wrote yesterday about an embarrassing incident involving skiers for this challenge which you can read here:

Today, let's us head back into the archives to childhood incidents where I have experienced the harrowing delights of embarrassment: harrowing, because they are excruciating to remember but delights because you can then use them as sources of inspiration and craft them into writing nuggets to delight (you hope) your readers.

In my primary school, the stage in our main hall was a portable affair, made up of boxes of wood which could be moved around to extend its size or, for productions, to landscape the performance area. Sometimes, during assemblies, we would be made to sit on the stage and on one such occasion, and I can't remember the exact one, I was sitting on the stage. It was not the most comfortable and I was wearing something made of thin material, a light summer dress, I think, and whilst shifting my buttocks to try and find a better position where pins and needles were held off during their continued assault to ensure my bum went completely numb, I must have inadvertently managed to pick up some stray wood fibres of the sharp and invasive variety - splinters.

They couldn't stay in and to be honest, once I'd got off that stage, I couldn't sit down again in class and so, the only course of action was to get them out.

My teacher did so by getting me to stand on a chair in the school hall, which is the only exclusively unused place in a small rural primary school as she proceeded to prise them out with a tweezers. Why the chair? She was a tall woman and needed my bottom to be at eye level. It must have been easier than laying me out although I will never forget the face of the person in the corridor outside, that I saw heading to the girls' toilets through the glass pane in the double doored entryway at the sight of me with my skirt pulled up, having a teacher scrutinising my bum cheeks. A mixture of horror and humour as well as knowledge that this would be a great piece of news to the rest of the school at break time travelled across her face all at the same time and I can remember the warmth which I felt in my cheeks, those on my face, at being seen in such an ignominious position.

Oh, the shame. Luckily, no lasting damage was caused to my posterior although it is not something that is easily forgotten.

I am very wary around wood now.