"Jesus, tender shepherd hear me, bless this little lamb tonite. Thou hast warmed and clothed and feed me. Listen to my evening prayer. Good nite. Sweet dreams. Sleep well." (Prayer (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) had to say to his parents, each night, on going to bed; I slurred the words to get it over with)
"Because my parents threatened me, I am a threat to myself and to the things I value." (BMcC[18-11-46-503])
"Trust but verify." (Ronald Reagan)
Yes, my reader, this really happened to me (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) when I was about 5 years old. The house was not so upscale not my mother so well dressed. My mother[2] was only carrying one small suitcase, maybe like an attaché case. The words were not so articulate: I probably didn't think any words but was just intimidated; my mother was not that educated (5.5th grade lavel?), and I don't think she said any words either. My father did a voiceover: Warning me what was going to happen unless I told my mother I loved her.[3] ☠
Faced with the imminent threat of abandonment, of course I capitulated. They won a Pyrrhic victory. They had exposed their monstrous inner core (of which they themselves possibly were unaware → did they have any self-awareness?). Obviously they did not appreciate that the words they got out of my mouth did not connote when they denoted, but were just a bone offered up to try to ward off as if an attacking dog. I have no memory what happened next. I must have given them enough to appease them.[4]
I fought back in the few ways I could. By extreme good fortune, I was unable to blow my nose. Sucking the mucous in made a noise they did not like, so I was able to tell them what I felt about them by sucking in my snot. Also when we visited my grandmother's house I would work on chiseling a hole through the basement's concrete wall. It wasn't very big but my grandfather did not like it. These people never apparently "got" the message.
We know from psychoanalysis (D.W. Winnicott) that a small child needs a "holding environment", which is normatively provided by a nurturinging mother. What was I to do, especially since I did not have a safe house to flee to?
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Technical note: Theoretically I cannot blame my parents for anything they did to me. They were themselves victims of American childrearing practices: The American Dream. The United States of America is ultimately responsible for all the harm they did to me, transitively, via all the harm it did to them.
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How much did I dislike my parents? I will probably never know, because I was not allowed to have my feelings about them. They should have humbly and sincerely inquired why I disliked them and whether I didn't appreciate myself how much I disliked them, and, of course, then taken action to remediate themselves. "We pledge our sacred honor to try to do better going forward."
About the only clue I have, as I may have written elsewhere, is that they always wanted me to blow my nose but I snorted my snot in. That was not a good idea since the mucous in one's nose might contain germs which could hurt me not them, but, they had [whether by autocratic intent, or ignorantly, due to their own having been ignoranced by their own childrearing and the social surround of their adulthood...] ignoranced me, so I didn't think clearly about my own well-being.
I could get away with them ideating, and probably also deceiving myself, that I was incpable of blowing my nose, which they could not do anything about. If they had got the notion in their behavioral comportments that I was being disobedient: wilfully refusing to blow my nose, they would have punished me for that. I had succeeded in frustrating them: them, although I could not get the full satisfaction out of it of clearly understanding that I had succeeded in deceiving them, and in a very small way, got them to be like little black Sambo and his tigers: chasing hteir own tails into self-destruction.
Therefore: I propose to hypothesize that I really, deeply hated my parents. But, again, they deprived me of getting what little pleseure i might have got out of them for this, and, had I clearly understood what was going on, I mught hae been more able to manipulate them to my benefit. Odysseus and the Cyclops telling his fellow big dolts: "Nobody hurt me!" "Are you hurt?" "Nobody hurt me!" Call me "Nobody"! (Exodus 3:14) Would/could I have liked parents who merited to be liked? I will never know because, again, the ones I got stuck with by fickle For-tuna ignoranced me.
"They put me off at the wrong stop when I was born." (Doug Schaff)
After many decades of forgetfulness, I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) have finally remembered one good thing about my mother-bitch, besides her idiot savant artistic talent: She would wash her face in the bathroom sink, in cold water, after lathering up her hands with soap. At least she did this when I was a small child, before she became an alcoholic. [Might this be a false memory, or something I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) am just cooking up in 2022?]
And now (+2022.11.16) I think I may remember another good thing: I think I recall my parents said they never spoke "baby talk" to me, which would be very good. Not: Itchy, kitschy your little wee wee, coo! Best guess: While I had no sexual or a fortiori erotic lexicographical landscape at all, I urinated not tinkled, neigher was there any "baby talk" nomenclature for: rectal enema. Orthogonal to all of defecating, shiting and, question mark: pooping, as elsewhere noted here, I "concentrated".
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![]() My (BMcC) stalag picture. SSS number: 18-11-46-503. Stone wall topped with sharp pointed shards surrounds institution for wayward orphans. My childhood took place inside invisible walls of ignorance and societal negligence. My parents may have meant well, but they did not know how to raise their child and their so-called society did not help either them or myself. What they did find and paid money for were self-righteous prigs in the guise of an Episcopal school that valued lacrosse above their Savior on a cross. IHS. ![]() |
Counterfactual: Let's rewrite all this shit. My mother was still an ambulatory schizophrenic but she had grown up in old wealth tutored by a loving old lady who was down on her luck Russian aristocracy, so she had been pampered like a pet poodle all her childhood and grown up to be a shy cultured flower. My father [General Turgidson?] was still away from home much of the time but he was a wing commander in General Curtis Lemay's strategic bomber command, always preparing to drop a hydrogen bomb Moscow at a moment's notice, and later pointlessly circling the North Pole in Operation Chromedome all the time. With her innate artistic ability my mother would play with me all day, enchanting me with all sorts of Dr Seuss-like little pictures and other things, like she would use scissors to make paper fantasy flowers for us to "water" with a construction paper watering can.... She would tire easily from the after-effects of her childhood polio, but we would have a very sweet pet cat who would gently play with me while mommy napped ["Meow!"]. And maybe we'd have a harpsichord so I could try to play Bach like aunty Wanda? If my mother had no boundaries, and I had no playmates, and we were both alone together all the time, what's wrong with pleasuring yourself or even a little incest, aunt Anna? I would never have had reason to call my mother: "mud". She would have richly earned "mommy". Except for seeing my father's head when he came home occasionally for a couple days, I would never have known that males got haircutted. "School"? What's that, mommy? Please read me the story about Gregor Samsa again, mommy! She might have a drink or two of Napoleon XO with my good nanny each afternoon, and let me taste it too... But never a real alcohol problem since we could always listen to aunt Wanda on the Victrola. And she and I would have lived happily ever forward.
As I have not forgotten my IBM manager with the "How to stuff a wild duck" poster on his wall told me: "If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."