Mon - January 12, 2004

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't out to cause them grief. It's just that my sense of derring-do developed far sooner than anything like good judgment. I would have jumped off a bridge if my friend Johnny did it. If Superman could fly, I guessed I could too. In soul and in spirit I embodied the Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest." My destiny tended toward proving unfit and cleansing the human gene pool as quickly as possible.

Thinking back on all of the heartache I brought my parents, I wish I could tell you that I limited my adventures to the realm of the physically reckless. but I also swam enthusiastically the seas of social ineptitude. In particular, I rained disgrace and ruin upon the exclusive Chatham Nursery School that my parents had labored mightily to get me into. The nursery school had formal rules and procedures for handling children; I had the attention span of a gnat and the persistence of a raccoon. Something bad was bound to happen. And more often than not, something did.

Take the time I gave my classmates lessons on the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals. I'd been playing at home with Play-Doh, supervised by my grandfather, when I rolled one piece into a green-shaped pill. "That looks like a suppository," said my grandfather, a pharmacist for 35 years. Having inadvertently created something that sounded quite important, I was keen to understand what a suppository was. So he patiently explained how suppositories were made, how they were used and—most impressive to my young mind—the orifice into which they were commonly inserted.

Back at the nursery school, where we also used Play-Doh, my suppository-sculpting soon garnered my peers' acclaim. It wasn't long afterwards that the nursery school and its parents became concerned that many children were pooping colored balls that looked suspiciously like Play-Doh. And it wasn't much later before investigators caught the criminal mastermind.

Poor Mrs. Chatham, the elderly English lady who ran the place, could not even bear to tell my mother what I had done. I had to stand in her office explaining to mom, in childish whines, the ruin that my budding medical career had wrought. She was not amused. "Do NOT, I repeat DO NOT ever do that AGAIN!" she hissed. I told them both that I'd learned my lesson. I promised that I would never do that again.

Whether the Great Grape Juice Protest took place shortly before or after this incident, I no longer recall.

The Chatham Nursery School was a very old, very august institution, a place of principle whose instructors believed that a foolish consistency was essential to mold young minds and save young souls. The school's inflexible routines—followed like clockwork—left no room for the demands of children nor time for the wiles of a problem child like me.

Among these time-honored traditions was the drinking of grape juice and the consumption of graham crackers immediately before nap time at half past noon. Because the procedure permitted no variance for taste, students who tired of grape juice were pretty much out of luck. Upon reaching my tolerance point, I inquired about alternatives. My queries were rebuffed. I pressed my case. The school pressed back. I appealed for apple juice. The teachers refused. So I sat down on the floor and refused to take a nap.

"You MUST take a nap," Mrs. Chatham said in horror. "EVERYONE naps at half past noon!"

Not everyone. I sat there like a young Ghandi for almost an hour, gathering a crowd of followers, disrupting the school day, and creating what the school could endure even less than suppositories: Disorder. Mrs. Chatham eventually sent me home with a letter to my parents explaining that I frequently disrespected authority and probably would never amount to anything. My mother kept her note. She still has it.

Yet from that day forward, the school always offered us a choice of juice before nap time.

Now I don't know much about karmic cycles, but I do know that I have a ways to go before I've fully atoned for being childhood's answer to Jesse James. So as my wife and I discuss starting a family of our own, a nagging voice in my head is wondering whether the universe will visit the sins of my past on the parenthood of my future. A benevolent God would excuse my transgressions. All the same, if Barrie becomes pregnant, I'm taking no chances. We're hiding our batteries and battening down the Play-Doh.

We might even invest in apple futures.