Day Eighteen: A Story From My Childhood

It's almost the nineteenth, and I'm squeezing this post in by the skin of my teeth, but this is Day Eighteen of the blog every day in May Challenge. The prompt for today is 'tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt.'

I  feel fortunate to say that I had a happy childhood. I was an eighties / nineties kid, which really was the best era to grow up in. It was safe to play outside for hours unsupervised, and we preferred to be outside, using our imaginations, than cooped up indoors. We had the best TV shows, Disney films, toys, and books. We always had a holiday by the sea, and a couple of trips to the seaside in the summer every year, I don't have many bad memories from my childhood, but I had my share of interesting moments...

One memory which is still so vivid in my mind, happened in class one of primary school when I was four or five years old. My best friend at the time was a boy named Dominic. We were playing make believe doctors and nurses (the innocent children's past time, you understand, not the role playing game played in the bedroom, you dirty-minded lot)! And Dominic must have aspired to become an otolaryngologist or something, as the next thing I knew was... he'd burst my ear drum with a cotton bud!

I remember approaching the teacher as I could barely hear a thing. The sounds of the world around me had become muffled and distant, as if I were swimming with my head under water. I don't remember crying at this point, but I do remember Dominic was in tears, distraught that I was going to die and he'd never see me again, and probably because he didn't want to get in trouble, too. 

My Mum came and took me to the doctor, and then we had to go to the hospital in Oxford. I don't remember much about the hospital appointment, but I do remember going in to a shop just before or just after going there and buying some Christmas decorations. A little hobby horse; a drum; and two Mickey Mouse decorations, which we still hang on our tree today. The trees outside were ablaze with Autumn foliage.

Unfortunately, the hospital appointment wasn't the end of the incident. I remember having to lie with my head in the teacher's lap whilst she administered my ear drops day after day, and how my ear would bleed. And I still remember having to go back to the doctor time and time again, and being in the waiting room with my Mum. There was a large grey rocking horse the size of a Shetland pony I would play on. I can still smell that distinct musky smell our local doctor's surgery had, too.

My ear drum eventually healed, although I still get pains in it every now and again, and life went on. Dominic and I remained best friends until we were about eight, when he and his family moved to the next town over. The last time I saw him was a decade ago. Thankfully he hadn't chosen a career in medicine, (wise move!), but was working as a hair dresser.

I still don't know why there were cotton buds provided for four and five year old kids to play with in a class room, but I'm pretty confident that today they'd be considered a potential hazard! I still can't keep cotton buds in the house, but I had no lasting damage!

What do you remember most about your childhood?