Childhood Resurfacing

I was at the mall today to pick up a CD that I wanted to get.  Yes, I sometimes still want a hard copy of my music instead of just a digital form.  What can I say, I’m an old fashioned young guy.  Well, relatively young compared to some people who may be reading this.  I also wanted to see if the grocery store there had pizzas on sale, which they did, but that’s not really my point here now, is it?  (That was a lot of commas.)

While going between the music/movie store I see this woman with her baby on her stomach, feeding it.  I wasn’t sure how she was feeding it, and out of curiosity I turned my head to see.  Luckily she was bottle feeding it.  I’m not sure what I would have done had she been breast feeding her child in the middle of the mall.

This isn’t my entire story.  This is only what sparked my memory of a past experience.  A memory that has been around for probably about nine years or so and fades only to come back to the surface every once in a while.

I was at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  I was about 11 or 12 years old.  I was there on a school trip.  I don’t remember why.  But they had fudge there.  I love fudge.  It tastes good, and makes me happy inside.  That may have been part of my reason for going.  Or it was to get a day off of school.  Either one seems like a good reason.

I had bought my block of fudge and I was walking around the fairgrounds.  It was a giant indoor place filled with dogs, cows, horses, and random peddlers.  There was even a Subway guy that I couldn’t understand, and I don’t think he could understand me either because if I remember correctly I got the wrong order.  But this isn’t the story I want to tell.  This is just filler to make this blog entry seem like it has more substance.  I’ll admit that.

Let’s say I was twelve.  Twelve year old me is walking from the front of the building where they have all of the stands to the back where they had the horse show going on, I believe.  There was a little area in between, where the sets of stairs were.  A woman was sitting on the stairs breast feeding her baby.  Once again, I’m not sure how it would affect me at this point in my life.  Would I be wondering why she was doing that in public?  Would I be all like “Boobies!”?  Would I just look the other way and keep walking?  I won’t know until the moment actually happens.  But at that point, I was in my mind thinking “What the hell?”  I was 12.  I didn’t understand the reproductive system and the mammary glands all that well.  I still don’t know a lot about women.

So what?  I saw a woman breast feeding.  Big deal, right?  I was 12.  Sure, there are some 12 year olds having sex, and there are teenage pregnancies.  There is also the other side of the spectrum where the children are overprotected by their parents and aren’t allowed to do anything with anyone.  The sheltered kids.  I was somewhere in between.  I knew about girls.  I knew I liked girls.  I didn’t know why.  But I didn’t think about naked girls.  And I definitely didn’t think about breast feeding.

I know it’s a natural thing now.  As a twelve year old without knowledge, it kind of freaked me out a little and I hurried my little ass out of there.

The memory remains.  Surely, it should fade with time, right?  I’m not sure it will, but at least it’s a story.  The most interesting, no, but still something.