I was born with a hole in my heart.
Obviously, it's been fixed, since I'm now 36 and not typing this from "the other side", but, as a kid, I always had much more interesting visits to the doctor than any other kid I went to school with. I had my heart repaired at the age of 4 (just before turning 5) in 1985. And, as anyone with major surgery will tell you...part of regular checkups includes making sure the organ you just fixed stays that way.
After every checkup, I was sent to Primary Children's Hospital in SLC, UT, for a follow-up ultrasound on my heart. At the age of 6, I had no idea that ultrasounds were used for anything other than looking at hearts (mine, specifically, because at 6 the world revolved around me. I don't know why I quantified that. The world still revolves around me.) Later that year, I was introduced to the prenatal ultrasound, and, through that, my kid sister. So, I now new that there was more than one use for ultrasound machines, but never put that information to use because...well, what little kid does?
Fast forward to 1998. I was still getting ultrasounds on my heart, and was really excited that I got to have one the next day. I gushed to my friends, who were also excited. One, in particular, because she had just seen her MOM have an ultrasound. Super neat, right?
So, the next day, I come into school around noonish. Which was normal for a day where I visited PCH. My friends were whispering and looking at me, then going back to whispering. After recess, I got called into the office.
The rumor mill had been working on overdrive. In the matter of one night, I had gone from a slightly atypical 8 year old, excited for a morning trip to SLC to the rumored school tramp, pregnant at 8 years old.
Obviously, I wasn't ACTUALLY pregnant. But, here I was, in the principal's office, with them ready to trigger a CPS investigation based on the playground rumors of some little girls who obviously had no idea that ultrasounds can be used for things that have nothing to do with looking at alien babies in uteruses.
So, I sat there, with 3 teachers (all of whom knew my mother, who wasn't answering the phone at home because she had stopped at the grocery store on her way home) and the principal staring at me, asking why I was telling people I was pregnant. I had NO idea what they were going on about, and I defended myself in the best way I could. Roughly an hour later, my mother finally got home and checked the answering machine, and called in, absolutely frantic. The message was apparently gruff, and was just "we need to talk about your daughter". I was either injured, dead, or had set the school on fire, apparently. After a 2 minute interrogation about the goings-on in our household, the question was finally asked: "Well, if she's not sexually active, why is she going around telling people she'd had an ultrasound this morning?"
I am positive that this was the first time in my life I'd ever encountered "pin-drop" silence before. Following was the only time I'd ever heard my mother absolutely let loose on an authority figure where I'd seen it. I'm pretty sure the term "intellectually lazy putz" was heard by more than just me on the other end of the phone.
The teachers apologized. The principal looked flustered. My mom came and picked me up early. And the girl who'd started the rumor never talked to me again, and walked away whenever I came by. Well, until I moved back when I was 19, and she told me that she had been embarrassed in front of the class by her teacher, who told her what the ultrasound was for, and then put her in "the seat" (the desk that is attached to the teacher's desk, usually used for the naughty or misbehaving kids) and taunted her. She eventually shook her actions and reputation as a busy body and rumor-monger, and I think that was my last year at Central Elementary before we moved to Escalante.
The moral of the story is...don't spread rumors, and don't assume the worst.
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