Yes –I am the kind of person that lays in bed in the morning and thinks about every misstep, error in judgment, mistake, or otherwise bad thing I have ever done in my life,  including, in the 6^th grade when Kenny Stackler, the neighbor boy down the street, was pushing me on a cart he and my brother had made. The cart started veering out of control, so I put my hand down on the ground to steady it.  The cart ran over my thumb and jacked up my thumbnail.  I had to go to the emergency room and have my nail ripped off.  This resulted in a huge bandage on my thumb and  a constant throbbing pain.  However, it was not enough to get me out of having to do my oral report for Mr. Aguirre in his class at Cloverly Elementary School.  I had to do a report on Octopi.  At the time, the majority of my research was done in The Golden Book Encyclopedia, which my mother had purchased at the supermarket, one volume at a time.  We had the complete set, and I had read it from A to Z when I was younger.  I thought that it was all I would ever need to use for any report ever.  However, Mr. Aguirre asked me questions about the octopus that I could not answer from my limited research.  It was humiliating on several levels.  One, that The Golden Book Encyclopedia was no longer ENOUGH for all of my school reports and research.  AND,  that I wasn’t as smart and I had thought I was.  UP to that point, I had not minded getting up in front of the class to speak.  I actually enjoyed it and had confidence in my abilities and my intelligence.  After Mr. Aguirre’s perceived brutal attack on my intelligence, from that day forward, I could not get up in front of the class for any reason.  I was terrified to speak up in class from that day forward.  Any class.  Even raising my hand become a source of high anxiety.  That continues to this day.  If I sign up for a class or workshop, I’m always worried that it’s going to be one of those where we go around the room and introduce ourselves and tell everyone a little something about us.  I end up not listening to anyone else and obsessing about what I’m going to say when my turn comes and all eyes will be on me.  Sometimes, my left thumb starts to throb.

So that was what I was thinking about this morning at 6 am as I lay in bed looking out at a blue cloudless day. Reliving 6^th grade anxiety about a ripped-off thumbnail and octopi.