Pain, oh, the pain...

I stopped at Woolies on the way home from work this evening, buying what I needed for dinner (forgetting that there was a blindingly brilliant beef stew in the fridge). As I left the cashier and made my way out I had to pass a young mother and her two younger (under 5, but old enough to legally walk) children.

(Gingers, I have to add.)

There was a boy and a girl and, by at least 50 decibels, the girl was by far the loudest, well into the throes of a full on dummy-spit.

It was nice to be able to walk away and leave that horrible caterwauling on the other side of the elevator doors.

And it occurred to me that I have absolutely NO recollection of MY kids acting that way. I know they must have. There's no way in hell, knowing their mother, that they DIDN'T act like this. At least once. More likely full time for at least six months. Each.

Isn't it wonderful how the mind filters out the crap it doesn't think you can handle? The extreeeeemely long sleepless night of the fist months of the first born. By the second born you give less of a fuck and let them cry a bit longer. Horrible? Maybe, but he's turned out okay. I only had two, so I can only assume that by the sixth, assuming you both manage to convince each other to go at it that long, by the sixth you stuff it in a bottom drawer with a bag of food and check in on it/him/her once and awhile.

But, as usually, I digress.

The mind. Blocking things. Oh yeah.

The terrible two haven't stuck in my head at all. Anecdotal evidence suggests it really occurred, twice, but I'm taking my word for it. I have no recollection.

I remember jabbing an electric drill bit, 1/4" I think, into the first knuckle of my right index finger in 1979, but I have no recollection of how much it hurt. Thank God.

I remember breaking my ankle in a very clumsy (by any standards) game of football (soccer to the heathens among you). I even remember the sound. And while I KNOW it hurt, I can't remember how much it hurt.

And this isn't something that needs a long stretch of time to work.

Three weeks ago, while being a helpful dad at the football club's barbecue for the Saturday morning game, a smallish piece of fried onion, and a slurp of the fat it was sitting it, slapped up against the tender part of my poor left index finger, just back of the fingernail.

Holy mother of a goat loving whore that hurt. I distinctly recall swallowing words that were very inappropriate given the ten year old boy standing in front of me and the offending griddle, waiting for his bacon and egg on a roll.

Although he was amused, the prick.

While I know that the index finger hurt more than any other finger on my body has EVER hurt, I couldn't honestly say what that hurt felt like. It's a wonderful, protective trait that the mind has. How horrible it would be to remember the level of pain you've experienced throughout your life.

Physical pain, that is.

I'll always remember the pain of having to sit through Transformers 2.