Dear Auntie Melp
I have a medical problem that is causing me great psychological damage.
I have just discovered I have a verrucha on my left foot. This would not be a problem to the average normal woman, but to me it is the ultimate nightmare!
This is due to trauma suffered as a young child at the hands of a particularly horrible swimming teacher, who, quite frankly, scared the shite out of me!
Every Monday afternoon she would march my infants school class to the local swimming baths, where we would be made to undress behind flimsy little plastic curtains in tiny cubicles that smelt strongly of feet.
Then we would be subjected to the humiliation of being made to kneel in a line against the wall, as this horrible teacher, who had a hairy mole and one ear-lobe longer than the other, slowley walked along the line looking at the soles of our feet to check that none of us had a verrucha.
This was a humiliating and very upsetting ordeal for me, I would constantly worry that, in the time it took for me to change into my swimming-costume with the little frilly skirt around it, a huge verrucha may have suddenly sprouted forth. I would have DIED of shame, as many of the children did when sent red-faced back to the changing rooms because "miss" had found them to have the dreaded lurgy!
This feeling of shame has never left me, and I have been woken many nights in a cold sweat, dreaming about kneeling on a hard swimming-bath floor, head squashed tightly into one of those hideous rubber swimming caps that push your forehead down and make it look as if your frowning.
Now, I actually have a verrucha!!!!!!! What can I do?? Should I seek psychiatric help? Am I mingin???
bebe
