From My Autobiography : First Day of School

 First Day Of School

SEPTEMBER

I enter Year 1 at Waterfoot Primary School. Miss Ludrow is my teacher.
    The first day at school is extremely traumatic for me, an intense feeling of abandonment as I’m thrust into a strange building filled with strange people.
    When Miss Ludrow introduces me, soft snickers filter to my ears from several students when they hear ‘Woodhead’.
    I’m so terribly nervous and stressed out that I feel a hot flash suddenly ripple through my body, and the next thing I know, I poop my pants.
    A putrid stench pervades the air. I’m mortified. I just want to run away and hide.
    I’m sent home to get cleaned up.
    I want to stay home.
    I don’t want to go back to school.
    Ever.
    But, of course, I’ve no choice.

One other memory I have of this class is later learning to write nicely, particularly swirling my pencil up and down repeatedly without lifting it from the paper to create a line filled with the written letter “S”.