I wasn’t in the mood to write today. I’m sat on the dog bed in my office, with Cacio curled up next to me—looking undecided as to whether my presence is a good thing—and ailed by a deep, dull headache.
I closed my eyes for a moment, my legs crossed and my laptop rested upon them. After a couple of minutes I felt my left foot start to tingle, so I uncrossed my legs and experienced that rare feeling: pins and needles, followed by an involuntary and painful sort of half-giggle.
I say rare but it wasn’t always, and that’s what I’m writing about today—because once some of the tingling had worn off my mind started to fill with memories of morning assembly at school. From my first day of school up until year nine, I’d have to sit cross-legged and would get pins and needles in at least one of my feet every single time.
After year nine I got to sit on an actual seat rather than the unforgiving floor of the gymnasium. Until then, though, we were packed together with crossed legs, sore wrists and tingling feet.
I remember the absolutely alien feeling of standing up at the end and one of my feet feeling three times its size. I remember chuckling alongside my classmates as we hopped and hobbled out of the gymnasium waiting for feeling to return. I remember when it did, we’d partake in the classic mischief of drawing on the gymnasium floor by way of scraping the sole of our black school shoes along the surface.
I attended a Church of England high school, so our usual assembly was sometimes replaced with holy communion, and a gaggle of 12 year olds would come jostling out of the gymnasium believing that they were out-and-out drunk from their absolutely-not-alcoholic wine, but with the criss-cross induced limp of someone who’d drank a bottle.
I’d almost forgotten about that—almost forgotten about assembly entirely, to be honest—but now it’s all coming back to me, just from a tingling sensation in my foot. Memory is a strange thing.
I remember at Northwick Manor the animal… person (that’s all I’ve got; occupation unclear) coming in to school and bringing a bonafide menagerie along with them including snakes and owls.
I remember the mystery man with the guitar who would have the whole year sing along to popular spirituals: “he’s got the whole world, in his hands, he’s got the whole wide world, in his hands…”
I remember the Cadbury Mini Eggs handed out at Easter assembly, and thinking that finally something good had come of this whole affair. I’ll take the chocolate, you can keep the bread and wine.
I wonder how many other memories are locked away behind a physical sensation. A vote, surely, for feeling things. Rain on your face. Wind in your hair. Whatever. Sensory, meet memory.