For my third birthday I had my party at the park. I don't remember much of that day, but I do remember one of the party games we played.
The game was like pin the tail on the donkey, except instead of a donkey it was a purple dinosaur, instead of sticking something with a push pin through it to a board (make children dizzy and then give them sharp objects brehs) you were merely placing a sticker on the board, and instead of appending the entire tail to a representational image on a wall our tail was just the tip (
) of one.
If having a party in the park wasn't already a clue that this was some bargain bin birthday partying, instead of providing an actual blindfold for this contest, whoever was in charge of organizing this debacle decided to use an ersatz one made from a couple of layers of paper towels instead.
My turn was fairly late in the rencontre and most of my opponents had performed as one might expect children around the age of 3 to perform at such a task, which at the risk of offending my readers' sense of reading comprehension I mean quite terribly.
When my turn finally did come up, I was blindfolded incorrectly. You may not know this, but when you use layers of paper towels to approximate a bona fide blindfold the finished product has one glaring problem: it doesn't maintain its shape very well, particularly over time. (Well, at least with the paper towels we had back then. Perhaps Bounty has corrected this flaw subsequent to these events.) By the time it got to me the blindfold was so ill-equipped to perform its role that when it was placed about my head I was still able to see unimpeded through the bottoms of my eyes.
Perhaps an honest child would have commented on this situation and asked for a new handicapping device to be prepared, I however was no such child and said nothing to anyone regarding my circumstances. In fact, not only had I suddenly been reborn a son of Laconia, but I began concocting a scheme to win while concealing my unfair advantage. As the adult in charge asked me to pay homage to the great Mevlevis before stumbling forward towards the target, it dawned on me that placing the sticker mostly on target but down and to the left of it would be the most plausible victory for a diminutive southpaw.
I sold my con quite well; I walked slowly while holding my hands out so as not to walk face first into the wall even though I could see the wall plain as day and couldn't do such a thing. When I did get to the wall I steadied myself against it, groped for the edges of the poster and made like I was trying to spatially approximate where on the docked denizen of the Triassic I should place my tail even though haptic perception was completely unnecessary to accomplishing this goal. Then after I felt things had gone on long enough, I timidly placed my sticker where I had planned to place it.
My blindfold was removed to mild congratulation from those gathered and while I'm not certain if I was last or not, I do know that no one bested my placement and I was the ultimate victor.
This is perhaps my earliest childhood memory. That it could be is likely exegetic, though I am as a blindfold made of paper towels when it comes to making such determinations.
Postscript: Perhaps 20 years later I was driving somewhere with one of my parents and out of the blue they asked me if I had cheated at pin the tail on the donkey at my third birthday party. Oddly enough, I unashamedly copped to my knavery. I think this was the phase in my life where I was an overt asshole that existed beyond remorse for there was no other reason not to simply pretend I could not even remember my third birthday party, let alone whether or not I had cheated at a game during it.
