It was the seventh grade. The world was absolutely perfect. I had perfect hair, and a perfect family, straight A student, endowed with a family legacy of prosperity and a glorious future.

Actually… I looked malnourished, dressed in horrific style, and made bad grades. My dirt poor family was falling apart due to drugs and alcohol, and no hairstyle of mine could ever take hold. I wore thick framed, ugly, tan colored plastic glasses that didn’t fit my face. In the early eighties, glasses were designed with the influence of the look of playdough and photo-grey lenses were in style and very useful for immediately stumbling in the darkness of sunglasses when you came in from outside. The middle school had many external annexed buildings, so that was very useful.

My mom usually cut my hair in straight lines, but even when I had it styled by a hairdresser once, it didn’t work. There was usually one side that just grew outward and flipped up. I erased and re-drew a comical self portrait of my picture in every yearbook I could get my hands on. I often wore a baseball cap everywhere – except school since it wasn’t allowed. I don’t know why. Maybe we could’ve smuggled food or unauthorized snacks on to the premises, competing with the corporate owned vending machines full of candy, cokes, and chips as an alternative to a healthy school lunch. If I had any allowance money, I had two Twix chocolate wafers for lunch. I saved the Corn Nuts for an afternoon snack, and the grape Bubblicious to later kill the putrid salty corn breath. Some days, I walked home for lunch. My home was just barely a block away.

It was a rent house. Red brick with a side carport that was my own private bicycle workshop. The master bedroom, on the other side of the house, was obviously an enclosed and remodeled garage. It upgraded the tiny house to three bedrooms. The landlord was an old woman with severe mental problems. She once held us at gunpoint at three in the morning, exclaiming we were in her house. Technically, she was correct. She had forgotten that it was rented out and that she didn’t live there anymore. She was removed by the local Sheriff and luckily somehow no one was hurt. She was never heard from again.

Part of my coolness appeal was my custom jeans. I had mentioned, or complained, to my mother that my legs were too skinny and I wished my pants fit more snug. Since I was only allowed new jeans at the beginning of the school year, I was stuck wearing the pants my mom decided to redesign for me. I’m not sure what she thought she was doing, but my thighs remained loose fitting while my calves were skin tight. I also wore cowboy boots exclusively, so it was an interesting look that didn’t seem to create a trend with the other kids at all.

That year I also had a severely ingrown toenail. I was a very trusting kid, so I allowed a very nice boy in the gym class locker room to perform a healing ritual he’d learned from his grandpa. He first took a very large dip from my can of contraband chewing tobacco, worked up a big spit, and let it loose all over my big, red, swollen toe, as a deadener, he explained, then he thumped it as hard as he could. I fell to the floor in writhing pain as the fairly large crowd that had gathered to witness my misplaced trust first hand, laughed until they cried, then laughed some more. It really didn’t help my toe at all, I eventually realized.

I had surgery on that toe later, from an actual doctor. I had to navigate stairs and long distances throughout the school campus on crutches for ten weeks. At least it got me out of P.E., although I still had to pointlessly be there.

The worst pain I have ever endured was the four shots of deadener in the top of my big toe. I was literally crawling backwards up the wall as he saddled my leg to give me the shots. After that, the procedure didn’t hurt, but was horrible to witness. He basically took pointed needle nose pliers and jammed it under my toenail, then opened them up, popping the toenail completely off. Years later, I Iearned that he was supposed to cauterize the cuticle so the nail would not grow back. I guess he just plain forgot, because it grew back and I still have a very painful ingrown toenail, many years later.

One day, I woke up, got out of bed, put on my pants that I’d left on the floor, probably ate some cereal, and sleepily walked to school. During the first class, I felt an itch on my butt, like we all get from time to time, so I scratched it. Later, I felt another itch, then another. I found myself subtly digging my finger deeper to scratch my butt. It was becoming a more intense rectal itch and harder to conceal. My adolescent mind assumed I was having an itchy bunghole day and would just go home at lunchtime to really wipe my butt, maybe even rinse off a little. As lunch became closer, the itch seemed to be getting really agressive. I was having to clinch my anus to keep it from itching so much. Finally the lunch buzzer rang and I hurried home, walking and clinching the whole way. I bolted into the bathroom and loosened by belt buckle and dropped my pants and underwear in one motion, clinking to the floor. In the center of a tan shaded streak on my half soiled underwear sat a stunned three inch long cockroach, shiny and as black as the night. My feet jumped as I screamed in fear as it immediately scurried away, escaping forever. The horror on my face was slowly replaced by pure disgust as I realized that monster insect had been actively trying to enter my anus all morning, and I chose to mostly ignore it. To be clear, it was trying to crawl inside my butt. It almost did crawl into my butt. I had never in my life felt less proud and ashamed and disgusted.

From that day, I have and will forever vigorously shake out my clothes before putting anything on, and now you might too.