I Didn’t Know how Not to be Bad

It was so cold; everyone (Mom and brother) except me was sick. It was one of the first winters that I spent away from my original birthplace. I loved the snow. The house was dark and warm. The heater was going full blast but my 21-year-old mother was shivering like it was freezing in our little apartment. My little four-year-old self was so very worried about her. “Is there anything I can do for you Mom?” I asked her with all of my concern written all over my face.

“Fix dinner for you and L—, okay?” she said in barely a whisper. I shop my head up and down, yes I would do that.

“Uhmm… what should I make?” I asked because I had never done this before. My beautiful sick mother told me to get out some hotdogs and corn and explained what to do.

I ran to do what she told me, and before too long, I had hotdogs and corn ready for me and L— to eat. L— sat and watched me, his big brother do something that until then was purview of adults only. It was an amazing feat to both of us. I was so proud of what I had accomplished; most of all, though, I was very happy that I got to take care of my mother.

Later that evening, I read to my little brother from my book, “See Spot Run”. It was the first time I remember feeling grown up, and I liked it.

A few days later the weekend rolled around, and me and L— went out to the playground outside of the apartment. All of the kids were sliding down the hill right outside of the complex. L— and I had these saucer type sleds that could go through the heck and still work. We began to slide down the hill with the other kids. It was great fun.

While sledding, I noticed that one of the kids had this neat little sled that just unrolled and he could lay on it. We started talking, and I asked if I could try it. He said no and went back up the hill to ride down again.

I saw him sliding down, and not quite knowing why, only that it would be funny, I slid my sturdy sauced sled right out in front of him, and he crashed right into it. My eyes went so wide. His face was all bloody. I immediately went to see if he was okay, and he pushed me away and ran home, leaving his fancy new sled. I picked up his sled and mine and went to tell my mom what happened.

She was very angry when I’d told her what happened and told me to go immediately to the little boy’s house and apologize. I did not want to do that, but I could not refuse, so I put my head down and trudged up the stairs to the next floor where the little boy lived. Knocking on the door was a test of my ability to overcome fear. As “luck” would have it, the door opened before I could even knock. There stood the little boy and his dad. The little boy’s face had a fat lip and a bloody nose. “Are you the F@#k*&g brat who did this!?” his dad exclaimed before I said a word.

“Yes sir. My mom told me to …” I started to say as he slapped me.

“Is your mom home?” he snarled.

I nodded, as I struggled not to cry, “Yes sir.”

He grabbed me and turned me around to head back toward our apartment. As we got to the bottom of the stairs, he gave me a little push with the hand still on my shoulder, and I fell the last few steps down the stairs and landed with a crash on the floor. At that point I could not help but start crying. The man told me to shut up and picked me up forcefully and pushed me toward the door to our apartment.

He knocked on the door, and when my mother answered, he tore into her. I don’t remember exactly the things he said, but they were angry and mean. It was obvious to see my mom was scared, but the man did not touch her.

When he left, my mom closed the door. She went into the room and came back with the belt, and then she started to beat me. It wasn’t a spanking. There was no care where the belt hit or what part of the belt hit. It just went on and on. When it was over, I had marks and welts everywhere from my legs and arms, my chest and back, and my head and face. I think the only part of me that didn’t have any marks was my butt. Then my mom stepped yelling and started crying and apologizing to me.

She asked me why I had done it, and I had no satisfactory answer for her.

Later on she noticed that I had a hand print on my face and asked me what happened. I told her, and she was upset BUT, WISELY, DID NOTHING.

Looking back on this experience, I noted two things.

The first is that I have this intolerance within me that still persists to this day when I don’t get my way. And the second was that both instances of physical violence that were done to me that day were done out of fear. I can only imagine how scared that man was at the violence I had done to his son. What if it would have been worse? And my mom, well she was a woman alone with two kids, and some guy was talking angry and mean to her. Yeah, she beat me till she wasn’t scared anymore.

Looking back on this, the main things that I see as having the biggest impact on the man I would later become is the fact that I could not understand what I had done that was so bad. My mind said to me that I didn’t mean to hurt him. The truth is that at this time, I was lying to myself. I can see that this behavior of mine was in reaction to being told no by the boy.

I hold no animosity toward anyone, AND I hope the man and his son are well all these years later (49 years ago), and I hope they know how sorry I am for having caused them pain. And my mom, she’s mom, right?

I wrote about these two incidents together because I wanted to contrast the little boy I wanted to be with the boy I could not seem to help being. (I say I could not help because I had no idea what was happening until it was too late). From the youngest of ages, I wanted to be a person that took care of others, but I had this selfishness and a dislike of being thwarted that was mean and vengeful. I think that this resulted from being insecure, in fact, I know it did.