Home Sick or my first sexual experience

Nothing had gone as planned. The TV wasn’t working. Mother made Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and commented once again that the little girl on the can looked like my sister. I didn’t like the little girl on the can. I didn’t look like anyone on a can. I didn’t even look like anyone on a box. Life is so unfair.

I shared a bedroom with my sister who was my mother’s favorite. Naturally, I hated her. Naturally, she adored me. I used this to my advantage in my various schemes to make her pay for my mother’s attention. When I was given a stick of gum to share with her, I got the gum, she got the wrapper.

Instead of getting to watch TV after lunch, my entertainment was to watch my mother scrub the bedroom floor. My sister found her blanket I had hidden under the clothes basket, then retreated to the living room couch. A silly, mindless child, she had no interest in floor washing.

I watched my mother’s hands encased in Playtex Living Gloves. When our TV was working, I loved watching the Playtex Living Gloves commercial. The man on TV made the gloves sound like the most wonderful invention of mankind. Eight delightful fingers with ribbed tips! Curved thumbs! So flexible you could pick up a dime! Then the best part: the close-up of a dime being pinched by Playtex Living Gloves. This fascinated me, this picking up of a dime.

But Mother never picked up one thin dime. My mother had beautiful hands with pretty, polished nails. She was very careful with her gloves. I wanted, no, I lusted for the opportunity to pick up a dime with those gloves. They made seductive squeaks. I loved them. I coveted them.

My mother was aware of my intense interest in her gloves, and she usually made sure we were kept well apart. But trusting me this one time, she left to refresh the wash water. She removed the golden gloves, turned to me and said, Do. Not. Touch. Them.

The Playtex living gloves were yellow disembodied hands lying on my bedroom floor. Take me, they whispered. Slide your hands into me. Now, now, quickly, before she comes back!

Go get a dime out of your sister’s piggy bank, they added.

Seduced by the gloves, I upended the piggy bank and shook it until a dime came out.

I put the dime on the floor. With exquisite anticipation, I put my hands into the gloves. Something was wrong. Very, very, wrong. The fingers of the gloves flopped like flaccid balloons. My thumbs were inches too short. When I attempted to pick up the dime, I was stunningly— impotent!

Did I experience joy? Did I feel release? Was I satisfied? No. Nothing but disappointment. If I had been Peggy Lee, I would have launched into that old chestnut, “Is That All There Is?” (Google it, you pathetic youngsters.) All that longing amounts to this?

Enraged, I grabbed the nearest weapon I could find, a pair of scissors. I went back to the gloves that lay there as if they had not betrayed me with hideously false advertising, as if they hadn’t a care in the world. I picked one up. I cut the pinky finger off. And then the worst offender, the thick, stubby, too short thumb. And then the fingers in between, and then I did the same to the other glove. I looked at the ten amputated digits, the living dead.

I was horrified. What had I done? How could I explain this? My mother loved those gloves, and I had killed them. She would know with one look at me that I had done the deed. Mothers always seem to know.

My little sister wandered in and stared at the carnage. She picked up one of the dead fingers. She picked up the scissors as my mother came through the door. Seized with creative brilliance, I screamed, “Look what she did!”

My sister didn’t have a chance.

Life is so unfair.