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Origin Story
By Stephanie Kemp
Origin Story
By Stephanie Kemp
Note: Please try to see this like a movie. I do.
When I was two weeks old, I got a bloody nose while I slept in my crib in our brand new house.
When my Mom came in to feed me she saw me covered in blood.
I was fine, but she never fully recovered from that visual.
(Take a minute to be that mom.....)
When my dad came home late from work that night, he found us asleep in our rocker. There was blood. On the chair. Our cheeks. The floor.
My dad always tells the story like it was funny.
He doesn’t tell the part about how he wet his pants...
but my mom does, although this is pending verification.
(Take a minute to be that dad.....)
When the babysitter came the next morning, she saw a bathtub full of bloody towels and my blood stained onesie in the sink.
I wasn’t in my crib and she couldn’t (and wasn’t sure she wanted to) find my parents.
(Take a minute to be that babysitter - or anyone else on planet earth who might have stumbled into this scene of domestic bliss.)
When the neighbors greeted the police, we were still sleeping in my parents’ kingsized bed, family style.
After the police woke up my parents (and put away their guns), they listened to a frayed couple trying to explain that their baby had a bloody nose.
My mom obviously made coffee and offered them cake.
(Take a minute to be in suburban Detroit in 1967.)
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My parents would’ve gotten divorced anyway.
The babysitter always wanted to be a writer.
The neighbors never really got to know us, but they did share their pool and seemed genuinely sad when we moved away.
The nice policeman from that morning arrested me and my friends for throwing beer cans out of a convertible on a summer Saturday sixteen years later. He remembered me by name (”Are you Stephanie Kemp, the bloody baby?”) then asked my mom out on a date when she came to spring us.
She said no, but charges were dropped.
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It’s like when they get something wrong in the newspaper (or Instagram!) and a week later they put in a tiny blurb saying they got it wrong.
No-one sees it. So the wrong part stays. And life goes on from there in a different direction.
It isn’t fair.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
(Take a minute to be that baby.)
Still, it makes you wonder.
Ps. I am going to have to give this story a different title. Your origin story should never be hearsay...(or evolve over a multiple player and decades long game of Telephone).
Pps. Maybe this is why I don’t like Instagram.
When I was two weeks old, I got a bloody nose while I slept in my crib in our brand new house.
When my Mom came in to feed me she saw me covered in blood.
I was fine, but she never fully recovered from that visual.
(Take a minute to be that mom.....)
When my dad came home late from work that night, he found us asleep in our rocker. There was blood. On the chair. Our cheeks. The floor.
My dad always tells the story like it was funny.
He doesn’t tell the part about how he wet his pants...
but my mom does, although this is pending verification.
(Take a minute to be that dad.....)
When the babysitter came the next morning, she saw a bathtub full of bloody towels and my blood stained onesie in the sink.
I wasn’t in my crib and she couldn’t (and wasn’t sure she wanted to) find my parents.
(Take a minute to be that babysitter - or anyone else on planet earth who might have stumbled into this scene of domestic bliss.)
When the neighbors greeted the police, we were still sleeping in my parents’ kingsized bed, family style.
After the police woke up my parents (and put away their guns), they listened to a frayed couple trying to explain that their baby had a bloody nose.
My mom obviously made coffee and offered them cake.
(Take a minute to be in suburban Detroit in 1967.)
___________________________________________
My parents would’ve gotten divorced anyway.
The babysitter always wanted to be a writer.
The neighbors never really got to know us, but they did share their pool and seemed genuinely sad when we moved away.
The nice policeman from that morning arrested me and my friends for throwing beer cans out of a convertible on a summer Saturday sixteen years later. He remembered me by name (”Are you Stephanie Kemp, the bloody baby?”) then asked my mom out on a date when she came to spring us.
She said no, but charges were dropped.
___________________________________________
It’s like when they get something wrong in the newspaper (or Instagram!) and a week later they put in a tiny blurb saying they got it wrong.
No-one sees it. So the wrong part stays. And life goes on from there in a different direction.
It isn’t fair.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
(Take a minute to be that baby.)
Still, it makes you wonder.
Ps. I am going to have to give this story a different title. Your origin story should never be hearsay...(or evolve over a multiple player and decades long game of Telephone).
Pps. Maybe this is why I don’t like Instagram.