I scanned Millie’s classroom, full of alphabet cut-outs and easy math problems, doing everything I could to avoid making eye contact with the other parents. Tonight was Family Night. Millie’s teacher had sat us down in what she called the Parents’ Sharing Circle to tell our children stories of an instance when we had done something honourable during our own childhoods. This was bad. I had not been a good child. I was never a Boy Scout and I never lit the candles at church. I could feel a bead of sweat slowly making its way downward between my butt cheeks. Millie looked up, her face beaming with pride in me — her father. I swallowed hard and half-smiled before I gazed out across the sea of adults. Successful, Polo-clad fathers and trim, elliptical-trained mothers. Their stories so far had been mythical; harrowing epics rivalling that of the Children’s Crusade. My turn was two parents away. What the hell was I going to say? I had never done a single honourable thing as a kid, and the only tales spinning through my head involved wicked and gruesome acts. There was the time I curated a baseball-card sale in my driveway when I was ten, and sold a fifty-cent Reggie Jackson card to the eighteen-year-old foster kid up the street for forty bucks. Or the time my brothers and I dug a hole down by the creek, filled it with our own urine, and disguising it with dry sticks and large oak leaves, lured our grandfather to the trap. Cringing at my own memories, I now had a pool of sweat festering in my pants. My mind was racing to find something, anything good. One parent away now. My face felt wet. Millie tugged on my sleeve. I looked down at her.
“What are you going to tell, Dad?” she whispered through the gap in her teeth.
I didn’t know what to say. I started laughing nervously and Millie furrowed her brow in confusion. No cohesive thoughts were forming now, only scattered images of tire swings, firecrackers, and the tormenting of the bald kid with the hearing aid who lived next to us.
“Mr. Plant? Would you like to share your story now?” Millie’s teacher was looking at me as if I hadn’t done my homework.
“I’m sorry, what’d you say?” The other parents were staring at my sweating forehead, chest and backside. I could feel it.
“What is your story, Mr. Plant?” She forced a polite tone, but appeared obviously impatient. And then it came to me. I fashioned the most serious face I could.
“I had cancer when I was a child, so I didn’t get out of bed much.” The children’s eyes grew huge and Millie gasped. A short silence followed.
“What kind of canther did you have?” said a fat freckled kid sitting next to the chalkboard.
“Rectal.”
“Does that mean your butt?
“My butthole.”
The children erupted with laughter. Their shocked parents covered their mouths, and Millie’s teacher inhaled violently, raising a hand to her chest. I smiled, my underpants feeling less swampy. I had won.
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