Dinnertime, car riding and a reflex I still have

Having dinner as a kid was (as I realize now) a not pleasant experience. At the time, I thought it was what it was... dinnertime.

As kids, we all sat in the kitchen at the table to eat dinner. My parents never joined us unless it was a holiday or something else where it required them to eat with us (friends over, ect..).

My folks would sit in the living room with TV trays and eat while watching TV. Me, my sister and my brother would all sit around the table and we'd always 'fight' over who would sit on the side that the back faced the opening into the kitchen.

See, the table was oval and the one 'long' side faced the window but then your back was exposed to the doorway where my father would walk through from the living room.

If us kids were talking or if he even thought we were up to no good, he'd walk through that door and "clock" whomever was the unfortunate one to be sitting in that spot. I guess he thought he'd just take it out on whomever was closest?

To this very day, if my dad or other over bearing person or even just someone who is loud or walks heavy, etc... walks behind me, I still will physically and unconsciously flinch and almost duck - closing my eyes and slightly leaning forward as if to dodge a wayward ball coming toward my head. It's a reflex to trying to get away from getting knuckled to the back of the head without warning. It happened more than I can count and honestly if I did count, it'd probably make me sick to my stomach.

Same with car rides.

Three kids, a back seat. One had to sit smack in the middle and that was the most undesirable place in the car.
Whoever sat there, would surely 'get it' whenever my dad got a wild hair to smack the shit out of someone because in his mind, we were being too loud (IE: talking) or because another person pissed him off and since he couldn't hit THEM, he'd hit us.

Story of our lives.

So whichever one of us 'got' the middle, we were the easiest to reach and he could manuever the car and beat the living snot out of whoever sat in that spot. The person directly behind him could duck and lean toward the door and naturally, the person sitting behind my mom.. that was the preemo seat. Too far to reach - at least while the car was moving.

Again, I now avoid back seats like the plague and even riding with someone if they start to get a bit PO'd because some wanker cut them off in traffic, I feel queasy and anxious even though I'm sitting up front.

So many things have an impact and we don't even realize it....

Concrete Angel... can we rise above?

When you least expect it, some not-so-pleasant thoughts come rushing back.

A few days ago something happened at the school where I work. One of the male teachers has a very difficult class this year. I personally feel it's a combination of having too many behavioral problems in his class and his lack of classroom management.. but I guess that's beside the point.

I was walking between buildings when I saw two students huddled on the sidewalk with a stick. I called out to them and asked what they were doing. They had a small snake there and was poking it with a stick. Now if you're thinking what I was thinking, "It's a harmless garter (?) snake".. well, it wasn't.

It was a baby, but it was trying it's damndest to take a bite out of one of those kids.

So, I took the stick from one of the boys and told them to get Mr. XXXXX. I figured maybe he could find a five gallon bucket and place it over the snake because this just happened to be in a place where kindergarten students walked through.

I'm standing there with this mean and quite mad snake, holding a stick and keeping my distance just in case any more students wandered along... and suddenly the doors burst open and about 6 students rushed out.

They all rushed toward me like they were on a mission.. all babbling, "Where's the snake.. let's see it!" I held up my left arm and told them to back off, and get back to class. That's when their teacher... Mr. NoClassroomManagement comes out and YELLS at them. Now, when I say YELLS, I don't mean just raised his voice.. I mean he yelled.

Something inside me just froze and I could feel myself lean forward and cover my head. It was so embarrassing... I had this pissed off snake trying to bite me, I'm weakly holding a stick and then I look like I just had a brain aneurysm because I'm 'ducking and covering' certain that I was about to have the shit knocked out of me.



Then I have students asking me, "What's wrong!?" and Mr. NCM starts yelling even more at them to leave me alone.... and I feel like I'm back at home and my dad is screaming at me right before he started swinging and hitting me upside the head. I started crying and didn't even realize it until the principal was summoned and found me outside bawling like a baby.

I haven't had a trigger for years, and then suddenly I was thrust back to a time where I was around 12 years old... it took me by surprise so much, that now I'm almost afraid that it will happen again.

See, I don't really want the people I work with to know about my past. I just feel as though it's embarrassing as hell. I tried to explain it to one co-worker a few years ago (when I worked for a bank) and she looked at me like I was telling her these things, just to gain some sympathy or some such crap.

I wish that people would just realize how hard it is to admit that your parent(s) are less than perfect and in fact, sometimes they are almost monster like. Even though I know now that none of the horrible stuff that happened to me or my siblings was MY fault.. it's still embarrassing and I guess a small piece of me still wonders if maybe I had done "x" just a little differently... maybe it wouldn't have set him off.

Why in the world would a person share such horrible things with another for only sympathy? Hell... I would have taken a better childhood in lieu of living with this shit any day! Much as I know anyone who's been through similar stuff would as well.

The Inaction of Others

Anyone who has been in the same shoes I was in as a kid, has to at some point in their lives, wonder why so many people knew what they were being subjected to - but chose to do nothing.

The fact that not only did family members know, they often times witnessed a lot of what happened to myself and my younger siblings.

Other people would comment on how well "behaved" we were. Little did they know, we were in genuine fear for our lives. I don't know for sure if my dad would've gotten to that point, but when a person is raging on a small child, who the hell knows what could happen. We see this a LOT today. A three year old dies at the hands of his step dad - a little baby died because he was shaken to death.

I sincerely believe that if someone would have tried to help us kids, my dad would have THEN gotten the help he so desperately needed. I really have to believe that my father was repeating the same discipline principles on us, that were used on him as a kid. I also believe his own demons from the military haunted him and probably still do. As far as I know, he's never received help for either of these things.

There was an instance where my best friend from high school witnessed my father beating the living hell out of me and it was then that I started to wonder if what happened in my house, didn't happen everywhere. I came to this conclusion after the total fear and shock on her face after the fact.

There was no food or beverage allowed in our rooms - and as a mother myself - I can totally understand why. Kids' rooms get messy enough without the added 'gross' of having dead food left in a room or dirty dishes for that matter.

Anyway.. my best friend came over one day after school and she had stopped and gotten herself a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's. I let her in and we went to my room.

She got out her food and ate it all, then proceeded to go into the hall bathroom and throw her bag with the trash inside, away in the trashcan.

It was shortly after that, I heard thumping up the stairs and my heart stopped. I knew what was coming and my friend sat there, oblivious to what was about to transpire.

My door was kicked off its hinges and my dad is sceaming that he "smells french fries!" and "goddamnit, there had better not be ANY food in this goddamned room!" He was weilding a razor strap and was storming around my room, dumping over my stereo, pulled my mattress off my box springs and then got in my face. My friend stood up like a bolt when the door came flying in, and stood with her back pressed against the wall with a 'what the hell!' look on her face followed by a look of flat fear.

I told him through tears that the food wasn't mine, that it was *****'* and that she'd finished and had thrown the trash into the trashcan in the bathroom. He wheeled around to her and then started yelling at her, asking her what she had eaten. She was so terrified.. she was rattling off the contents of her lunch, her voice shaking, very close to tears.

I wasn't crying for any other reason than I was so humiliated.. seeing my friend over my dad's shoulder as he sprayed spittle onto my face... his nose pressed against mine. His eyes bloodshot and his veins popping out....

He then threw me onto my box springs and proceeded to whip me with that razor strap. I actually fought him on this occasion, not so much that I cared (sad as that is to say) that he was beating me, but that he was doing it in front of one of my friends. My best friend, in fact. I kept trying to flip over onto my back, so I could get up and run, but he was too strong and it didn't take long for me to realize that I was only making it worse.. so I just laid there and let him beat me.

After it was over, I was bawling like a loon, my friend was crying and he just left the room. He went back downstairs to finish watching television.

....

My friend wanted me to pack my things and leave.. that this "isn't right!" But how could I leave? My brother and sister were there and what would happen to them? She wound up going home and she told her parents. While they were appalled... they did nothing.

It seems we've come to a point in our society where any child discipline is reported and to that effect, we have children running households instead of parents. I don't believe that children shouldn't be disciplined.. but beat? No.

It's just too bad that true abuse isn't acted upon and the regular upbringing of children by responsible parents, is.

I really let my son have it at the grocery store one time because he started whining about wanting some candy and wouldn't stop. I got in his face and said in a forced whisper, "If you don't knock it off, you will be sorry" and just gave him that "look". Some lady gave me the evil eye of disgust because I reprimanded my then 7 year old and wasn't going to give in to him. To bad that lady wasn't around when we were getting our bones broken.. she'da had a freakin' HEYDAY.

What I did that day was wrong, I don't deny that. I knew the rules and while my friend didn't live there, I did and so did my parents. Their house, their rules. I would have even taken a regular spanking or grounding. But not that. That went down wrong and unfortunately, there were many more times like this where the punishment went above and beyond anything that any child should have to endure.

Hey.. I was a kid and kids fuck up. As a parent, I make mistakes and yes, my kids can be butts as well.... but a little perspective is needed sometimes and if that takes a person stepping in to say, "Hey.. what the hell do you think you're doing?!", then so be it.

Trouble is, that line seems to have gotten blurred.

The day I knew that I was different

It was a summer day. The only way I remember this, is because I was wearing a romper. It was my favorite.. red and white checks with little lady bugs on a big pocket across the front.

I am the eldest of three children. My brother, three years younger than me and my sister, three years younger than him. My sister was born in 1974 and was just a baby when this took place.

My mother never worked outside the home except on the rare occasion that she felt the need to have some pocket money or needed a break from us kids. I don't know if there were other reasons or not, I'm only making assumptions.

My parents struggled quite a bit when we were all little.. much as any other family with young children, I suppose. We never went to bed hungry, we were always clothed and we were never without a home. All the material things that a kid could want, we had.

The one thing we didn't have... was peace of mind. Affection either, for that matter.

On this particular summer day, the window AC was running really loudly in the dining room and my mother was frantically digging through the china hutch. It was directly on the other side of the dining room across from the AC unit.

I remember standing there watching her and staring at her long brown wisps of hair that had fallen out of her bun, floating around as if someone with invisible fingers were playing with them.

She slammed the top drawer shut, and then dumped her purse on the dining room table.. cursing. She started crying, flinging papers all over the table top, and some were falling to the floor. At that point, I wandered into the living room to play with this doll I had. It was a pretty cool doll... it stood as tall as me. When I took it's hands into mine and walked backwards, the doll 'walked' with me. I don't think I had named it, but I loved it just the same.

Next thing I know, my father comes in from working outside and I hear mumbled voices at first. Fighting. Soon, he was yelling at her and said something about some doctor bill. From what I could gather, he was very angry because they were looking for some canceled check or receipt or something along those lines.

My brother wandered in from his bedroom and my dad yelled at him to, "Get the hell out of here!" and he came running into me carrying some rubber toy......

Then, it happened.

My father rushed into the living room and asked my brother and I if we had seen a small box that had checks like this (he held up my mom's checkbook). I said no and my brother just shook his head.

Apparently, this isn't what my father wanted to hear. He charged at us, smacked my brother upside the head, knocking him to the floor, and then lifted me up by one arm and whaled into me like there was no tomorrow. There was my brother, laying on the floor, screaming bloody murder, my mother was screaming at my dad to 'leave them alone' and me, dangling by my wrist being hit repeatedly until he finally dropped me to the floor.

He asked again.

"Have you seen or did you take, a small box with checks in it like this!"

I whisper/cried, "No..." Instead of yanking me up this time he grabbed my doll.. the one I loved SO much, and he swung it around and broke it over my back. Broke it so badly, that the torso split in two, the head popped off and one leg went flying.

I felt like that damn doll looked. I often wondered what he'd done if MY head had popped off instead of that dolls head. I was so scared. I remember sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe. I wanted to run away and I was laying there.. my back, head, legs, wrist and arms.. burning and stinging like mad. I couldn't figure out why he was so angry... and why my mom didn't DO anything.

Time went by and things are a bit fuzzy for me memory wise, but next thing I knew, my mom walks in and says she found it. My dad proceeds to bend down and give my brother a hug and tell him that he was sorry.

....


I sat there staring at him. Why was he sorry for hitting my brother, but he wasn't sorry for beating the shit out of me? Do you know what I was told by my mother later when I asked her, "Why did dad say sorry to **** and didn't say sorry to me?"

"You're the oldest. You have to be the example for your brother and sister."


That's the day I realized looking back, that at that moment, I knew I was different than my siblings.. and things for me while living under their roof, would never be peaceful for me.


The year was 1975 and I was six years old.

How It All Began

My mother and my father were high school sweethearts and fell in love.

My fathers family was a well-to-do family and had a family 'name' that was recognizable upon uttering. My mother's family on the other hand, was a simple family and had roots in farming and country life.

When my father was just 19 years old, he proposed to my mother and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. My grandparents liked him from the beginning and gave their blessing readily.

His parents however, were against the idea. I actually didn't know all of this particular information until just about ten years ago, when my Aunt (my father's sister) let me know. Up until then... it had been one of those dirty family secrets.

My mother apparently, wasn't good enough for their son. Oh no. They needed someone more cultured, more wealthy, less likely to speak her mind.

So.. my parents being the strong willed people they are, decided that the only way they'd get everyone's blessing was if my mother wound up pregnant. My father was in the Marine Corps and this was during the Vietnam War- he, a high school graduate of 1966 and my mother, an up and coming graduate of 1968. Social upheaval ruled the day and they did what they felt was the right thing to do for the time.

In April of 1968, they were married and two months after that, my mother graduated high school. My mother was 3 months pregnant with yours truly. I was born in October that same year.

Enter the life of me. The child that was wanted...




...but not really.