When I was six, a strange man sat down next to me while I watched my older brother’s Little League practice on the playground at El Dorado School. The man put his hand inside my shorts and inside my underwear and felt me up. It didn’t hurt.



I was sitting on the ground with my legs straight out in front of me. The man asked, “Is that better?” He looked like a mental patient from the nearby state hospital. I thought he had misinterpreted something I did, like fixing a wedgie, to mean that he should touch my vagina, which I thought was called my “Olivia”.



I wish I had asked: is Playground Guy a secret? Have I been indelibly slimed? And​,​ why is it so embarrassing?

I was confused between the name for my genitals and the name for the mother on The Waltons, since “vagina” and “Olivia” are both long words ending in the “uh” sound. This is how little I was: I did not know how to read. My bike had training wheels. I thought The Little Prince was a true story. I believed the moon sucked the ocean up at night, and that’s what made low tides. I was learning right from wrong and right from left.

I told my mom what happened. After that my memory of Playground Guy goes dark until one day in about third grade. We were driving in the Pontiac, and my mom asked me if I knew about “playing with yourself”. I guessed she meant using your body as a toy, like doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider.



My mom said I played with myself too much after the man touched my vagina at El Dorado, so she got her friend Frances, a psychologist, to talk to me at recess at my school. Frances did not tell me she was a psychologist so I would not be alarmed.



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My mom brought it up now to find out if I remembered Frances, which I did not. Playground Guy jolted back into my consciousness, trailed by an imaginary Frances. I pictured her as the actress Marlo Thomas, smiling with kids on a jungle gym in the women’s lib kids’ book Free To Be You and Me, with long smooth hair and a shiny knee-length coat.

Years down the road and out of the blue, a family member said: “Guess what I heard! You were molested!” I had not forgotten Playground Guy, but I had not thought of him. Now, in high school, the memory of a stranger reaching into my underwear was less confusing but more unsettling. It seemed unfair that I had to interpret it through the fog of having been six.



I wished I could remember what I told Frances, because I had the sense I told her important details that I later forgot. I mined my recollection of kindergarten and found a mental treasury of minor misadventures that I could write about for AP English. There was the time I took the wrong bus, the time I got left behind when my class walked to a park, and the time a boy blew the teacher’s whistle and she said she would have to boil it. But Frances eluded memory.



Did I tell her it was my fault because I was fixing a wedgie on the baseball diamond? Maybe Frances explained that Playground Guy should not have asked “Is that better?” because there was nothing wrong with me to begin with. Maybe she soothed me, saying “There, there, honey, you will be ok,” like Marlo Thomas would if she met me on the jungle gym.

I feel shame but I try not to cooperate with it

I wish I had asked Frances: is Playground Guy a secret? Is he important? Can I talk about him if it’s distracting not to? Have I been indelibly slimed? And why is it so embarrassing? I was inspired to find an answer for this last question recently when I read the words of a Hollywood actress. She had never told her story of sexual assault until now because she was ashamed. She faulted herself for being vulnerable.



This reminded me of my persistent game of whac-a-mole with the worry that I accidentally invited Playground Guy to touch me. We imagine we contribute to our traumas, because it is better than not having a choice, and then we are ashamed because we adopt some fault. Also, it is hard to tell a story in which a central character is your Olivia.



It is tempting to say that #MeToo ladies should not feel ashamed, but shame is the feeling that you aren’t supposed to feel the way you do, so saying you should not feel shame makes it worse. I feel shame but I try not to cooperate with it. We can survive embarrassment. So I decided to grit my teeth, squeeze my eyes shut, and jump in with two feet. Awkward is the new polite.

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