Childhood memories worm their way into subconscious adult minds

MY DAY of childhood ignominy and shame stands out because it was exceptional. That day, if I’d developed horns and a tail, nobody would have been surprised. My mother spouted horrified reproach in a sporadic way, like a water tap with an airlock. How could I? What kind of a child would ever? The very idea of inflicting such cruelty on a dumb animal.

I absorbed all the punishment she wanted to deliver, although some of it was puzzling to a six-year-old. The dumb animal bit, for starters. Would it, I silently wondered, have been less ghastly if I’d cut up an animal that could talk, like my grandfather’s budgie? Also, I wasn’t sure if a worm was an animal, but it did not seem a good time to do genus-clarification.