My parents taught me to love, to question, to challenge. These three lessons helped me to rebound from the thousands of others that came later. Whatever damage they did to me, they gave me this, a heart, a mind and a hammer, without which I would surely be lesser.
When I was eight or so, I filled my pockets with gum from the counter of the local Soda Shop. I don’t recall caring much for that gum. It lost its flavor too fast to keep me interested. It is worth noting that this is one of my brother’s favorite stories to tell to my new friends, simply because it is so demonstrative of my personality. When I came home, I dumped the gum out on the counter with pride and declared that the people running that shop were idiots. This was my proof! Evidenced in the fists full of gum, those people didn’t know what they were doing. There was a sign that read “10 Cents” and nary a soul watching the goods. My eight year old self probably didn’t say ‘nary’, but that was only because someone had neglected to introduce her to such a fine word. Regardless, I had taught them a lesson, and a harsh one, those stupid, stupid people. This was the first moment I can recall challenging the inane. I was a winner! I was smarter, I was triumphant, I was the champion of common sense and I had slapped them with the consequence of their naivety. What in the world did they think they were doing, expecting people to honor their little defenseless sign? Didn’t they know that people are sheisty and untrustworthy by nature? Not me, other people. I stole out of obligation. I’m a gem. My mom, however, being a mom, didn’t give me an attagirl as I had expected. Instead she demanded I take every piece back immediately, which I promptly did not do. Instead, I pretended to walk back downtown, all the while chewing every last disgusting spoil of my victory. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to go ingratiate myself to the same people who had just let me rob them blind. If I told you I did this yesterday, I doubt you would be surprised. If I told you they still have the same gum and the same little sign (only with a higher price), would you understand my position?
From a young age, I was well aware of things that most kids weren’t exposed to, or at least not with intention. I knew that blind trust was a request for injury, that nobody had every answer and that those same nobodies were doing a lot of not saying the things they were thinking while saying many more things they didn’t actually believe. I knew that my best friend’s father was a child molester and that the machinations of the adult world allowed him to continue to unleash his evil on helpless beings. I knew my best friend was one of those beings and that no matter how many toys I gave her, no matter the songs we danced to or the hours we spent climbing trees, pretending to be children who didn’t both know what we did, she would step back in the door each evening to find that monster. I knew he was scared of my mom and I never had to fear for myself, but my friend, my friend. I knew, when he sent the toys home, when he barred me from the house, then the yard, when he stopped her from coming to church, that he was closing in. That the manicured lawn across there street was the place where nightmares began by turning little hearts in prisons full of secrets no babe could tell, not even to their best friend. I knew evil looked like an architect. Question.
I watched the monster drunkenly dance with my childhood friends, atop his beer stained rug in the dining room of what was once a distinguished manor. He held their hands as he two stepped, greater than six feet, they maybe four and I sunk back into the recesses of the room and myself, wondering how this could be and how they could not see. I thought of the dungeon and the skeleton keys, the rats and the open mouthed lions that waited like omens at the threshold. I thought of my friend and how she quite literally fell to her deafness as a baby and the weighted look she always wore and how unfair. Unfair for her to live, unfair for me to know and be so impotent. Her mother stood aside at all times, letting the monster prowl and groom at will and I hated her and her blank face. Love.
I told our mutual friends about him. I told them in the most diplomatic way that any eight year old could. I told them what I had known for so long but had not uttered. I told them so that they wouldn’t be devoured, so that they wouldn’t dance or look at him stupidly like he wasn’t the scaly, slimy, slithering horned monster that he was. We were never friends again. Challenge.
Sometimes people don’t want to know the truth. Sometimes they don’t want to know that their gum is easily stolen or that their architect is Satan or that they’ve delivered themselves over to the world as a meal, or worse, have been delivered by someone they love. Sometimes people glance your way, share themselves utterly with a look and retreat as fast, because they know there is nothing you can do to save them. Sometimes you can’t save them, sometimes I can’t, sometimes I cry at night. For my friend who isn’t a little girl anymore, I cry and I question. For all the little girls, which I never was but saw, I love. For all the institutions and rules and states which defy sense, I challenge. And if there’s a super power I’ve been given, it’s this.
Thank you Mom & Dad
The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes 