Project 28: Pickle Sandwich

There's a scar on my forehead - faint now, and it used to be hidden under a hairline that has since retreated to higher ground. I doubt most people would know it was there. Even I barely remember how I got it. The following story I've pieced together from my parents' recollection of the events. And because of the pickle sandwich, I know it's true.

At four years old, I could be irrational, demanding. I'm sure that's a characteristic belonging to most young children, who have yet to be persuaded that the world revolves around something other than them. In fact, I imagine I was cooler headed than a lot of children that age, so much so that now, with some sense of regret, I look on irrationality as a virtue, as if I wish to make up for tantrums lost. Still, I must wonder how my parents felt when, on that Sunday afternoon so long ago, I asked that they, for lunch, prepare me a pickle sandwich.

"What do you want?" my mother asked again.

"A pickle sandwich!" I said.

"And what do you want on it?" 

"Pickles!"

"And did you want anything else on it?"

"Um," I said with all the thoughtfulness of a toddler, "I want butter."

Resignation. "Okay," my mother said. "Go get your brothers, and we'll say prayers."

With infantile abandon, I turned and ran to gather my older siblings for the blessing on the food. I say "infantile" rather than going for the usual cliche with the word "reckless," because a combination of culinary anticipation and a lack of motor skills meant that my brief jog through the house would be anything but "wreck"-less. Within seconds, I had collided with a wall. I bellowed in pain and ran straight to my father, still dressed in his nice Sunday shirt.

My dad paid the price for fatherhood in white shirts.  Already he had sacrificed one to me when, as an infant, I blew out a diaper during church services.  Now he had no choice but to hold me, bloody forehead and all, while my mother grabbed her car keys to drive me to the instacare, where I received my first stitches.

Afterward, my head all bandaged up, I sat placidly, mulling over my misfortune, mouthfuls of pickle sandwich in my mouth.  I remember the sandwich quite fondly, and how my mother sat next to me while I ate it.

That said, the sandwich itself was rather disgusting.

My first attempt at flash memoir. Not the greatest effort, perhaps, but a good deal more honest than a lot of stuff I've written recently. Yes, even that bit with the diaper is true.

The drawing was a bit rushed. If I'd taken more time with it, I think my mother would have looked a lot less like Lois from Family Guy.