I was thinking about all the times I have lost control. I started out with your average temper tantrums: best friend making out with my boyfriend, little sister borrowing my favorite shirt without asking me, patrons at work being obnoxious, the normal gambit of stuff that upsets people.

Then I started branching out with my interpretation of 'losing control.'

I now include it all:
-When I was three, my mom liked to dress me in these bell-shaped dresses and wiggle me into fuzzy textured tights. One day, while gurgling in the back seat of her Galaxy 500 while she was getting ready to unstrap me from my car seat harness thing, I lost control of my easily irritated bowels and shit in my fuzzy tights. I don't remember a whole lot of the scene, because, you know, I was three, but my mom has said that it was like watching a pureed banana being squeezed through a sock. Which is probably close to what it was. I really loved bananas. But so then she had to deal with me, screaming and hating being in what amounted to a shit wet suit, feeling the stinky liquid turd spreading along my tights and dripping into my shoes. She yanked me out of the car and held me dangling over a trash can, peeled off my tights and tossed them, then squeegeed most of the mess off of my legs with some dusty Dairy Queen napkins from the glove compartment. Good times.

-When the fire alarm went off in kindergarten, and I, in my special, home-made mouse Halloween costume, panicked and climbed up on one of those little chairs and shook my fists at my sides and screamed and punched anyone who tried to pick me up and carry me outside.

-Again, when the fire alarm was pulled by some mischievous kid at the YMCA while I was immersed in learning the American crawl, I shot up out of the water and bawled all the way to the locker room, where I waited for my mother to come upstairs and take me away from the screeching noise. Luckily, she had been reading Good Housekeeping in the pool observation room, and saw the whole thing: me biting the wrist of my instructor when he tried to lift me off the deck and put me back in the water, me running at full speed across the slippery tile and slamming my tiny saggy-swimsuited body into the locker room door, me disappearing into the stairwell with my mouth open in a terrified scream that no one could hear over the alarm.

I'm sure she was pissed about losing the only 45 minutes that she had to herself all week, and while she was dressing me, she yanked my clothes on a bit harder than usual, and left my soggy braid INSIDE my shirt, which left a huge wet snail trail that leaked into my buttcrack, which I totally HATED her for, and she kept sighing, and said, "For Christ's sake, by the time we get you dressed, they'll have shut off the alarm and the $2.75 I spent on this lesson is as good as flushed down the toilet."

So many more stories, so little time left to type them. More later, I promise.