Erasure

AWW - 10/19/11
non-subject: erasure
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I've heard people say that if they had their life to live over again, they wouldn't change a thing.

I would.

I'm not sure what all I would change, but I'd make some decisions that I didn't and I'd unmake other ones that I did.

What have I tried to erase?

I draw a blank as I sit here and stare at the page trying to recall my erasures in life. I can think of things I've not revealed, but I have difficulty thinking of things I've tried to erase.

Is my memory so bad that I've erased my erasures?

Yet, I know there must be erasures. Perhaps a good exercise this week is to be aware when I reach for the eraser and try to undo a mistake before I'm found out.

There is the time when I was in first grade; I drew the naked picture of my father.

I sat at my school desk. It wasn't a table; it was a desk, wooden and metal with a cubby under the seat in which to put books. It was a right-handed desk with a curved wooden bridge that was part of the desk top. The bridge connected on the right side to the back support. I could rest my arm on the bridge. At the bottom of the slightly sloped desk top, the part nearest my body, a very small, ten-inch ditch was smoothly carved, a place to park my pencil. The desk top smelled like a type of buffing cleaner, or maybe that was the smell of the floor or the room.

I don't know why I drew the naked picture of my father. I don't remember what we were supposed to draw. Perhaps our assignment was to draw a family picture; my father often walked naked in the house. Sometimes I'd get afraid that he might walk around naked when my friends were over, but I don't think he ever did.

After I drew the naked picture of Daddy, I felt shame. I needed to get rid of the picture. So I switched pictures with Susan who sat beside me in her desk. When she wasn't looking, I stole her picture and put my picture where hers had lain upon her desktop.

I got in trouble, but I don't remember exactly what the teacher did. Probably nothing too bad, other than a verbal scolding.

I didn't draw any more naked pictures...until I was thirteen and in love with Marshall.
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