04.14.08
My Stage One Story
I have been thinking, if we all pass through the lower stages as we develop, then there has to be a time when all of us were at Stage One - called the Lawless Stage in some places on this blog. Well, searching my childhood memories, I have come up with a story of my own from that stage.
When I was little for some reason I had a strong fascination with nurse’s kits. I don’t think this sort of toy is popular at all anymore but in my day, there were many available - a plastic case of some sort, something like today’s first aid kit, that contained oh, a plastic stethoscope, toy blood pressure cuff, some bandaids, gauze bandages, and usually a play nurse’s cap. (If this was before your time, in those days nurses wore a cap, usually white with maybe a red cross on the front. By now the use of nurses’ caps has fallen by the wayside in favor of the unisex scrub uniforms, sans cap.) Well, anytime I would pass by one of those nursing kits in a store, I would beg and beg until my parents bought it for me. As I recall over time I had many of them. I actually have no recollection of what I would do with these kits once I got them home, but the desire to possess them was overwhelming.
Well, in kindergarten I had this friend named Gail. One time I was allowed to spend the night at her house. In the morning as we were playing, her older brother dragged out his doctor’s kit. That’s right - not a nurse’s kit, but a doctor’s kit - something it had never occurred to me to beg for - such were the cultural limits put on women in those days - but that is another whole story. Anyway, inside Gail’s older brother’s doctor’s kit there was something not found in the nurses kit - pill bottles! Yes, to my extreme amazement, four or five little bottles wth tiny multicolored candy pills inside. I cannot begn to describe to you the captivation I then felt regarding these bottles. Was it because I wanted the candy inside? Not in the least! It was the very thought of those bottles that grabbed me. Suddenly I knew I absolutely HAD to have them!
Thoughts swam in my head. If I asked for them, this kid might just give them to me. Or I might have to trade something of mine in exchange. But, I was sort of shy about asking. And I really didn’t have any good way to explain why I wanted those bottles. Was it because I didn’t feel I could ask my parents to buy me my own doctor’s kit? I don’t think so, but who knew if we bought another doctor’s kit, whether it would contain these same type of bottles, or even any bottles at all?
Now, I had had enough moral training to realize it was wrong to steal. But……at that moment it just seemed that was my only choice. I wanted those bottles so badly that leaving them there at Gail’s house was simply NOT an option for me that day. My conscience tried to step in and do its job, but well, weakly developed as it was in those days, my only strong concern was “Would I get caught?” and ”If I got caught, just how much trouble would I get into?” Surely, these bottles had little or no monetary value. But in my relatively powerless state as a kid, my ability to obtain them any other way through my own resources was non-existent. At no point did I consider that stealing those bottles was in some way harming my friends. I only wondered how long it would take them to realize the bottles were missing. Would they remember that we had played with them the day I was over there? Would it occur to them to accuse me of stealing them? Would these bottles be a serious enough loss that my friends would cause trouble about it?
While weighing these options in my mind, I waited and watched for my opportunity. How could I get the bottles into my possession without my friends noticing? At some point when Gail and her brother had moved on to another activity, I managed to slip those bottles away and stuffed them into the bottom of my suitcase. …..and I have absolutely no recollection of ever playing with them once I got home.
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My comments about this story will appear in the next post. For now, I am asking my readers to think back to their earlier years for a story of when they were in this stage. It is very hard to get adults currently in this stage to share a story, but surely many of us can remember one from our childhoods! I would love to show more of what this stage is about, so if you can remember one from way back when, please send it!!