teenage fears

The way that your memory compresses things decades back is nothing strange. I'm thinking about how many years other people wipe your butt for you, and then when you do learn, how many years it takes you to be consistently good at it. Once you are entrusted with the responsibility of wiping your own ass and adult undergarments, there's gonna be some years with the occasional skid mark. It just takes some time to perfect.

When I was, let's say, 12-18, that period of non-mastery really stuck with me. It was a decade or less since I had figured out wiping my own ass. The last time I shit my pants was age 10. I probably had an occasional skid mark here or there, as even still as an adult, sometimes I do a less than bang-up job.

But the thing about ages 12-18 or so was that I was constantly worried that I'd wiped insufficiently and there was still some shit residue. I felt I was singularly bad at wiping, and that as a result I always smelled kind of like shit. I have always been a sitting down wiper, but I might end with a couple standing up "power moves" to make sure it's all gone. I actually still do that some times. I overwipe these days not uncommonly, I know I'm fine but I keep going.

I remember being around a friend when I was 14 who had a bad smell and thinking, oh, he must also be bad at wiping his ass. I made fun of him to project these insecurities, it really got to him. I probably smelled fine.

In high school, I thought about who was sitting behind me, and how they must smell my ass-smell. I'm pretty sure they didn't. It was also a time when I had long hair and I wanted very badly for my hair to retain shampoo smell (I used Herbal Essences, they advertised a lot then) the way female friends of mine's hair did. I wanted the good hair smell to stay, but thought only the shit particle smell was there. It was a very smell sensitive time.

My freshman year of college, I remember being mooned through a large pane of glass by a friend. I jokingly yelled at him "you should learn to wipe properly", conveying one of my own secret concerns. But then this fear just kind of fell away later that year. No precipitating incident I can remember for that, it just fell away. There is no perfect ass wiping, but I do a good enough job and I feel solid in that now. The memory of the fear is something that's lurking in the back of my mind.