I still think about that day in Mrs. Albright’s 7th-grade math class. It’s strange, the things that stick with you, isn’t it? The truly insignificant moments, the ones that objectively mean nothing in the grand scheme, yet they burrow deep and refuse to leave. We spend a lifetime accumulating these little pinpricks, these small shames, and then one day you’re seventy, and they’re all still there, shimmering just beneath the surface, waiting for a quiet moment to reappear. It was a Monday. I remember that because Mondays always had that particular flat, grey light filtering through the classroom windows. And it was a test, algebra. My stomach was doing its usual tight little knot before a math test, not because I was bad at it, but because the pressure felt immense, a public display of my intellectual worth. We were halfway through, the room silent save for the scratching of pencils and the occasional cough. I remember feeling a peculiar warmth, a seeping sensation, and for a split second, my brain just… denied it. Just outright refused the information. Then came the cold. Not cold, exactly, but a damp chill that spread through my jeans, an undeniable, sickening awareness. I pressed my thighs together, subtly, I thought, but it was too late. The seat was wet. My clothes were wet. And the smell… oh god, the smell. It was faint, just to me, I hoped, but distinct. The sharp, acrid scent of urine. My face went hot, then cold. My heart hammered, a frantic bird trapped in my ribs. I knew, with a certainty that only a thirteen-year-old can possess, that my life was over. Utterly, irrevocably finished. I raised my hand, slowly, my arm feeling heavy as lead. Mrs. Albright, bless her, was a stern but kind woman. She looked up, her spectacles perched on her nose. "Yes, dear?" she said, and her voice sounded impossibly loud in the quiet room. I couldn’t speak. My throat was tight, choked with shame. I just gestured vaguely towards myself, then towards the door, trying to convey urgency without giving away the horror. She seemed to understand something was amiss. "Do you need to go to the nurse?" The nurse. The blessed, beautiful nurse’s office. A sanctuary. But it was the *how* that was the problem. The walk. From the back of the classroom to the door, a seemingly endless expanse of linoleum, flanked by rows of desks, by other children. By *boys*. I imagined the dark, spreading stain on the back of my jeans, a map of my mortification for all to see. The thought was a physical blow. I could feel tears pricking at my eyes, but I willed them away. Crying would only draw more attention. More questions. More *looks*. I stood up. Slowly. The chair made a slight scraping sound, and I tried to keep my back to everyone, my hands pressed against my rear, as if that would somehow absorb the evidence. It didn't. I could feel the wet denim clinging. My legs felt like rubber. Each step was an act of raw courage, or maybe just pure, unadulterated terror. I remember walking past David Miller’s desk, and he was chewing on the end of his pencil, his eyes flicking up. Did he see? Did he smell? My entire being was focused on moving, just moving, getting to that door, escaping. I made it. Somehow. The walk felt like an eternity, a slow-motion public execution. I got to the nurse’s office, the blessed quiet, and she was kind, of course. Changed me into some spare clothes, scratchy and too big, and called my mother. My mother. Another layer of shame. The conversation with my mother in the car on the way home was… brief. She was sympathetic, of course, but there was that underlying current of *how could you?* and a general feeling of disappointment that seeped into my bones. Not that she said anything directly. She didn’t have to. We learn early on how to read the unspoken judgments, don’t we? That day, that walk, it became one of those things you bury. Deep. Under layers of other, more important things. Like having children, and raising them, and the endless mundane tasks of keeping a home, and the slow, insidious way you lose yourself to the needs of others. But then, late at night, when the house is quiet and the light from the streetlamp casts long shadows in the bedroom, it sometimes comes back. That feeling of being exposed. Of having a fundamental, private failing made horribly public. Of the searing shame that still makes my cheeks burn, even now, decades later. We carry these things, we humans. We become defined by the moments we pray no one ever saw. And sometimes, you just wonder if those moments are actually what everyone *did* see, and they just never said anything. And whether that’s worse.