What could a kid raised on television, root vegetables, and neglect possibly have to write in his journal? You’d be surprised.
It’s a bit scary, bordering on horrifying, how much writing material we can find in our childhood, when we know how to look for it. In only a few posts in this series, I wrote about an emotionally-confined, secret-keeping family; a repressive religion; feelings of being othered and isolated; broken friendships; domestic violence; loyalty tests; community silence, and inter-family, inter-generational grudges, among other topics. And that’s just the early years!
Ok, maybe you had a happy family <eyeroll emoji> but your family undoubtedly experienced stress, sadness, and the unexpected. You also had neighbors and people at church and extended family and kids at school and teachers, and you might have had people you knew through activities like sports, music, scouting, or 4H. Certainly their lives were not perfect, even if you only glimpsed them in part.
No one escapes childhood unscathed. You had fears and disappointments, unrequited crushes, embarrassments, and humiliations. You had questions you couldn’t answer until you reached adulthood, if then.
If you can find that many experiences and emotions in the compact space and time of your childhood, imagine what’s waiting in your adult memories. Consider what’s happening around you, right now. If you want to write, you don’t need high-octane premises. You need you.
It’s my turn again, the last one for now. In Monday’s post, I already shared two stories from middle school (approximately ages 12 to 13), one an unjust and humbling experience, the other unjust and traumatic, both of which happened to other people.
I also could have written about being in the middle school gymnasium in sex-segregated gym class for team basketball, the boys in yellow t-shirts and maroon shorts, and sneakers and tube socks that revealed both social class and mobility. Sears-brand Keds and socks with stripes the color of the wrong football team meant at minimum some teasing and at worst a trip down a few rungs of the social ladder. I couldn’t do anything about my sneakers, but even knowing nothing about football, I could confirm the acceptability of my socks before wearing them. No match to any team at all, preferably single color stripes, blue or black, was ideal. Some two-color combinations were acceptable, and orange and teal were stuffed in the back of my dresser until I outgrew them, because everyone knew the Miami Dolphins sucked.
Don’t blame me. I didn’t make the rules.
I remember a kid who lived around the way in my community, a place that decades later is still too sparsely populated to be called a town. Until I was about 7 or 8, our houses didn’t even have numbers, though our mailboxes did. Our address was Mail Route 2 Box 272.
Hank was a redneck kid with a thick southern accent whose participation in gym class could be described as good-naturedly abstinent. He neither raised a fuss about joining in on activities nor actively engaged in them. About half the time, he dressed in street clothes. I believe if Hank changed into his gym uniform and touched grass, the coaches considered it a victory.
We were inside, playing team basketball, so this would have been sometime between November and February. Astoundingly, Hank was dressed for gym. A group of us were waiting on the bleachers as other teams played their round. Hank wasn’t a particularly talkative guy, but wasn’t unfriendly, but that day he sat quietly on the lowest bleacher, knees spread, arms on his thighs, head dunked. As Hank was a conscientious objector to physical activity, this did not seem unusual, until one of my friends nudged me and directed my attention his way. The group quieted and above the din of dribbling and squeaking sneaker soles, Hank mumbled, “My hands are blue. My hands are blue,” over and over, as he slowly rotated his hands.
He didn’t respond when we called him name or shook his shoulder. We formed a protective ring around him, because we knew this was something adults should not witness. In retrospect, I see this was an essentially meaningless gesture, because they never noticed what we needed them to, not even a 13 year old with his head bobbing, mumbling nonsense, entirely out of his gourd.
Despite our concern, we did not ask for help. We hastily concluded Hank was “on something” and we were pretty sure it was “pills.” Pills were a big deal then. Every television drama and a few sitcoms aired episodes about people in trouble because of pills, taking them or selling them. There was no discussion, only immediate silent concurrence that we had to hide this. If Hank were caught with pills, he would get in trouble, suspended or possibly expelled. It did not occur to us that he might be on something besides pills, or in the middle of a very bad trip or possibly an overdose. TV had not yet prepared us for that. Somehow we made it through gym class without having to nudge Hank through a basketball game, though frankly, he could have sat out the whole hour and none of the teachers would have remarked on it. By the time we headed back to the locker room, his head had cleared enough for him to function, but he was still pretty stoned.
I could also have written about my pseudo-girlfriend in sixth grade. Girlfriend because I liked her a lot, and because the proximity of our surnames in the alphabet meant we sat together in a bunch of classes, and we did the same after school activities, so I saw her all the time. Pseudo because I was socially much younger than my twelve years, so the boyfriend/girlfriend thing was a non-factor, and she wasn’t a member of our church, so even being friends was a dicey choice, and I’m pretty sure she would have laughed at me if I asked.
Terry was short, feisty, cute, and Italian. She took no shit, gave good advice on getting out of trouble (“Lie, dummy!”), and was the only person who teased me with affection. We talked about our families and other kids and teachers we hated and if she laughed at my foibles and embarrassments, she did so in a way that made them easier to bear, not worse. She might have made me blush, but she never made me feel ashamed. More than anyone, she helped me past the social ineptness that hindered the middle school years I was woefully unprepared for. I was two years ahead of my grade academically and two years behind socially, and she did her best to help me catch up. There was only so much she could do, but whatever agility I gained was primarily due to her.
By seventh and eighth grade, we didn’t have as many classes together and Terry mostly replaced after school activities with a social life. That social life involved her older sister and her friends, high school guys and I suspect older than high school guys, who had their own cars and access to alcohol and drugs. Terry once showed me the bottles of pills she kept in her purse. Pills again. Whatever they were, they got her through the school day, and I never heard that she hallucinated or crashed, so she must have had a better handle on what she took than Hank. I do remember times she seemed a bit spaced out, but that also could have been due to a hangover or lack of sleep.
Terry continued educating me, once regaling me with a hilarious-to-her story about skull babies, pausing briefly at my blank stare to explain in whispered tones that a skull baby was a girl who gave head. I might have been dumb, but I was smart enough to pretend I knew what that meant.
I was also smart enough not to question her about drinking, pill-popping, and hanging out with high school and older than high school guys. Even if I wasn’t sure what head was, I could guess that sex was happening, now or in the very near future. Looking back with an adult’s jaundiced eye, I can see the change in the way Terry carried herself from one year to the next. If I had to guess, the display of pills and story about skull babies possibly occurred before, but not too much before, though there’s a good chance skull-babying was already happening.
Though the scenario was not as immediately urgent as Hank’s, it’s another instance where the code of silence won out. But who would I have told? A trusted adult? I didn’t know any. And what would I have told them? Something about pills I couldn’t identify and high school guys I couldn’t name doing things I hadn’t witnessed and couldn’t say where or when they occurred? Not to mention, Terry would have killed me if she’d gotten caught at school with pills, whatever they were, as I would have been the obvious narc.
Today, telling an educational professional about a thirteen year old girl getting drunk, popping pills, and riding in cars with adults might elicit a reaction. Back then? Not so much. Our teachers told us stories about the Rolling Stones having teenage girls on their tour jets and laughed about it. If anything bad had happened to Terry, they certainly would have agreed she’d asked for it.
So there’s two more short memories of childhood. We’ve continued the theme of loyalty and the code of silence, but progressed beyond family dynamics and church drama and adult dysfunction to find illicit drug use, underage drinking, and sex that was at best reckless and at worst statutory rape, and adults who couldn’t have cared less about it. And it all happened when I was only 13, at the very cusp of my teenage years.
I had another vignette lined up, but this has post has already gone on and on. Maybe if enough of you ask for it, I’ll post that one in a few weeks too.
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