Love is an Action

I was a seven-year-old that knew nothing about women’s sanitary products. You wouldn’t expect me to, surely? 

But as you would expect, my female teachers did. Privately and quietly, they knew what was what, and what what was for, if you follow me.

I suffered bad nose bleeds. Sometimes they would go on for an hour or more. It was just one of those things of growing up. I had nose bleeds.  End of story.

Sort of end of story. Some might know the end already.

My mother had been a nurse in her younger years.  She was proud of it. In fact it became a bit of a pain she advertised it so blatantly at every opportunity. But being young and impressionable I was required to be proud of it and so I was. When she presented me with a little silver tin marked “Nigel’s nose bleed kit” for school, I felt special. 

I should have been wary though; the extent that someone might go to display both fierce mothering and medical capability can be a dangerous thing for onlookers when there is no upper authority to stem the enthusiasm. Like a headmaster. Or a school nurse. Or psychiatrist. 

Me and my nose bleeds were a guaranteed source of attention every time they happened. I became a victim in need of attention.  And now a nose bleed was an opportunity to show off my special tin box, with nose bolster and scissors and things like that. 

I waited for the day.  Sometimes I had little bleeds but nothing much.  Nothing enough to be stretchered to the nurse’s station with staff blaring “Stand Back. Stand Back!  Get out of the way!! Boy in crisis and danger of bleeding out. His life is in mortal danger.  Clear a way through!!!”.

I waited, each day carrying my little silver tin in my schoolbag, wondering when it would see action. Weeks went by, my little tin box awaiting disclosure, waiting patiently at the bottom of my brown school satchel.

The day did indeed come during my second year at the school and must still remain in the memories of my teacher, Miss MacDonald.  A single woman in her mid twenties, a teacher fairly new to the rigours of primary school teaching in Scotland, she was nice; I liked her. Caring, enthusiastic and energetic. 

Ruth a six year old class mate had her desk next to mine noticed me hunched over.  Her hand shot up “Miss, Miss Nigel’s got a nose bleed!”

It was a good one. Both hands were quickly catching the gush and it was spreading. Fingers, hands, wrists, shirt.  I had a hankie, but it was hidden in my shorts and I couldn’t get to it. Clearly, this was becoming a “bleed for the tin” and was rapidly approaching my moment of fame. Mrs MacDonald came over to assist. “Oh dear Nigel”, she said as she approached me “It’s okay.”

“Mith I’ve goth my nothbleeth boxth” I said as struggled to lift my satchel. Blood running down my arms. She complimented me “Oh that’s well prepared, Nigel” I reached under my desk and pushed my satchel out with a leg so Miss MacDonald could rummage through it and find the tin marked “Nigels nose bleed kit”. She found the magic box, opened it, stuck a finger in and pulled the little scissors out.  Then she moved her gaze and attention from me to the box for a while, then put the scissors back in, slowly but surely closed the lid of the box and put it on my table without looking at me. 

I was crestfallen.  My hour of need and Miss MacDonald wasn’t going to do the box thing in front of my waiting audience. 

“We’ll see if it stops.  I’m sure it will in a minute ” was her firm solution. We found my handkerchief in my shorts. She looked strangely at me and put the box back to in my satchel, got me to pinch my nose and hold my increasingly red and white handkerchief a little tighter. 

The nose bleed didn’t stop though. I started doing the two handed shuffle with an increasingly bloody handkerchief, head back, pinching my nose, shirt getting redder. The girls of the class were shocked and worried at the developing situation and the boys were enjoying the bloody spectacle. 

Of course, I had no idea what was lurking in the box. To this day I have no idea what my mother was thinking, or the teacher in fact, apart from opinions at opposite ends of a scale of what is acceptable to expose the innocent public to in a minor emergency.  In what world in this universe is okay for a seven year old to be expected wander around a primary school with something resembling a bloody sanitary pad under his nose, attached to each ear by a home designed loop?  

The nosebleed didn’t stop.  Miss MacDonald clearly had to do something and her recent teacher training hadn’t fully prepared her for this, specific, scenario. Hardly surprising though. Teaching arithmetic, reading, and writing with a smattering of religion and Scottish history was probably more on the agenda than managing exposure to quasi-sexually orientated byproducts that could traumatise one of her young charges for life if he ever found out what was really going on.   

She left the room for a couple of  minutes before coming back to me, picking up the box and marching the three of us … her, my box and me … by the arm, on tip toes, out of the classroom, across the assembly hall and into the admin office/nursing station, where she left us in the hands of the school secretary and temporary nurse, affectionately know to the whole school as Jilly. Mrs Macdonald quickly disappeared back to her waiting class. 

Jilly opened the box, already have some knowledge to what it contained, and a painfully protracted conversation started as to whether I really needed the “nose bolster” applied, or whether a nice quiet time laid back in a soft chair would stop the bleeding.  I was promoting the wonderful tin box offering it proprietorially a number of times as a solution.  “Ith thould work, my Mum mathe it” I said.  She didn’t seem bothered, but I really hoped that this time it would be used. 

Jilly closed the door, sat me with my back to the window where no one could see me, and took the lid off the box.  

“Are you SURE?” she said. She couldn’t even take it out of the box but instead tilted the box over so I could see its contents. “Yeth” I said, nodding my head, fingers pinching my nose.  

She removed it with her fingertips, resigned to her new responsibility, and came over to me on the chair. I leaned forward, tilting my head to the left and presented an ear, ready for the first loop.  She stretched it and pulled my ear through, giving it a little tug so my ear popped out in its original Nigelesque shape.  She took the hankie away from me and I helped her place the second loop, with another little tug.  We snuggled it under my nose as I sniffed a dribble of blood from my upper lip, and I sat back in the chair again, moving my head around feeling the nature and bulk of this unusually big white thing under my nose.  I could see it quite clearly when I looked down.

It was a perfect fit of course.  My mother had already tested it out on me at home. I knew it was to be my life saver in more ways than one.  I would look a special little boy with special needs when it was properly attached. I wasn’t far wrong.

On it went.  I was happy as Larry. Proud as punch. I sat there, languishing in my new found pride.  I wondered if I would be allowed back to the classroom so that others could observe my new specialness.  

I wasn’t allowed out of the room though. The headmaster popped in and looked at me from a distance leaning on a table at the far end of the room, arms crossed, peering at me quizzically, asking Jilly how long it might have to remain on.  An older teacher, Mrs Morrison also popped in and observed me. In my innocence thought were concerned for me, for my health and safety.  In hindsight I think the concern was for their own protection. I answered their questions with a little affectation, hamming the severity of my situation a little bit, milking it for everything I could. They didn’t seem overly impressed with my amateur dramatics and wanted it over and done with. 

I remained in the room for quite a while.  Jilly would gingerly pull a loop off my ear and examine the blood stained pad.   I can’t imagine now what was going through her head when she saw that it was still trickling and my bloody pad had to be squished back into place for another period. 

The blood eventually became visible on the outside of the pad.  I could see, proudly spreading either side of my nose. I noticed Mrs Morrison, also leaning against the table beside the headmaster, closing her eyes for more than a few seconds as the inspection happened, keeping her head absolutely still, as if in a trance for a while. Face motionless, tight lipped, eyes closed, arms and legs crossed. Then slowly opening her eyes, clenching her teeth, saying nothing when it got pushed back in place. She didn’t stay too long though, walking out of the room with the headmaster. I thought they were off to attend to more serious duties than my nose bleed. 

Now, in the benefit of a more mature hindsight, I don’t think it was just going away to crack on with the onerous duties of running a pressured, busy, overpopulated Scottish primary school.  No, it was probably to have a sensitive, shocked and embarrassing conversation in a private room between an aged, adult man and headmaster who, though he knew these things existed, may never in his lifetime have been exposed to a bloody item like that before, and a woman who most certainly HAD. Regularly.  

Bearing in mind this was the early sixties and sex education was sparse to say the least, tampons hadn’t been introduced and womens periods were a thing of great privacy, I would have loved to have been a fly on that particular wall when the discussion finally got under way. 

“eeermmmm” “Hmmmmmm” Red faces all round …

“Sir, that’s WRONG”

“Oh God, Mrs Morrison, I ….. I ….. I …………..”

“ Cant believe it, sir?”

“ I’m not used to seeing things like that.  I’m a man for heavens sake”  “ That THING through there …..  That THING is wrong, totally wrong”

“I know Sir.  I don’t know what was going through her mind to give him one”

“ Is she mentally deranged or something? That poor boy…. He hasn’t got a clue.   Its disgusting.   And its all over his …… his …….. his FACE for Gods sake”

What a fantastic conversation to be in on.  The first ever grand exposure to a good protestant husband, an upstanding headmaster of a Morningside school, of the unwanted details of a womans private life, spread all over the happy face of one of his primary school children.  

How many boundaries did that one cross for him?  

And Mrs Morrison, now in the presence of that headmaster, her boss, trying to be an advisor, a comforter, a saint, trying to not talk about the elephant in the room that …. this is what life is like every month for a woman …. yet secretly hidden away to protect the delicate emotions of men who would faint at the thought. 

Oh, that would have been a wonderful conversation behold.  

My innocence remained intact though, I never knew of the intricacies and embarrassments of the discussion between the head and Mrs Morrison and how there was no going back for them either. 

My bleed eventually stopped and the bloody, squishy, clotted, dark red pad was wrapped up and disposed of in a bin. Jilly was an expert and knew how to get rid of one, quickly, quietly and unceremoniously, despite my wishes to take it home and present to my mother as a trophy of my ordeal.  

I was fascinated, horrified, proud of what I had managed to create yet oblivious to the back story.  Some twenty years later the back story did dawn on me after disussing nose bleeds with a parent of a child that also suffered nosebleeds.  It was one of those slow awakenings of reality that started with a little “no” then became a “NO” and then a “NOOOOO” of horror and growing disbelief. 

In retrospect I couldn’t remember the tin being in my satchel for long after that.  In fact I can’t remember my mother even making another one. We didn’t have mobile phones, so the incident and any surprise couldn’t have been relayed in the moment. 

Maybe someone had a quiet word. I would have, if I were involved as an adult in those days in that situation.  

Or rather I would have got someone else to. Like a middle aged female who knew the ropes, so to speak. 

Like the wonderful, wise, Mrs Morrison.  

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