my pants fell down in a food store

When my daughter was in the second grade, her class was asked to write in their writing notebooks daily. They would be given a prompt. The children had to write at least two complete sentences, which is a steep goal for a child who is still writing in block letters, not knowing how to spell many words.

Rosie never wrote more than two sentences but she also never failed to write two complete sentences.

My favorite memory of those writing assignments was when she was asked to write about her most embarassing moment, as of age 7.

She wrote "My most embarrassing moment was in a food store. My pants fell down."

All the kids tended to echo the writing prompt in their first sentence. The word prompt was written on the blackboard so they could all copy down big words like embarrassing.

Why do I love Rosie's two line story about her shame in a food store?

When she showed me her writing notebook, I remembered the moment her pants had fallen down when she was three or four, in the Byerly's in St. Louis Park. At least I think it was SLP. It was the biggest Byerly's at the time, a fancy new store. The main floor of the store was filled with straight aisles, up and down. All along the outer perimeter there were little turn outs that focussed on one kind of food. There was a dairy turn out, a wine turn out, a coffee and tea turn out.  These 'U' shaped bulb-outs from the main store had displays in the middle of the "U" and then all around the perimeter of each 'U'. In the back of the "U", if no other shoppers were present, no one could see any shopper in the "U".

Rosie had been in the back of the dairy "U" when her pants suddenly fell down around her ankles. I happened to see it and, just about as fast as the pants had fallen, I pulled them upt. No one saw her but me. She did not voice any embarrassment at the time.

When she wrote about that moment a few years later and I read it in her writing notebook, I remarked on it, telling her I had been unaware she was embarrassed. She must have felt her shame keenly if she remembered it years later.

When I brought up her two-line story about her pants falling down in a food store, she laughed and said "I had to write 'food store' because I couldn't remember how to spell grocery."

I love that very short story. I feel empathy for my very little girl feeling embarrassed in a moment when no one saw her vulnerable but me. And I love, so very much, her intelligence in writing 'food store' because she couldn't remember how to spell grocery.

I had known since she was an infant that she was very smart. Heck, a pediatrician had told me when she was only a year or so old that I had a genius on my hands and I should be prepared to send her to a school for gifted kids. But she, personally, demonstrated her intelligence when she wrote 'food store'.

I love her. I miss her.