I Have Some Bad Childhood Memories
When I was fifteen (the same year I figured out my mother was interrogating me with the use of drugs in my sleep), in the late fall of the year, I was walking to school one day and a guy I knew rode by riding a Vespa motor scooter he'd just bought to help him get to and from his job at a pizza parlor. I waved, he pulled over and offered me a ride. I accepted. We rode at about 15-20 mph to our high school which took about 10 minutes.
I was delighted because I had spent that year's summer in Rome, Italy visiting my father. I had spent most of the summer riding around with people on Vespas, seeing the sights. I had gone out on my first date ever with an Italian man on his Vespa. We had gone on a picnic to a monastery and it had been fun and a bit romantic.
I had written a lot of letters and postcards about the fun I was having. I wrote letters twice a week to my mother (she never answered any of them). I sent postcards and pictures, including photos of me riding back seat on a Vespa on the Via Veneto in Rome.
My kind and wise stepfather, Sidney, insisted we only discuss pleasant subjects at our dinner table. This stopped my mother from endlessly picking fights with me at dinner, and that made me happy. Every day I would try to remember all the good things that happened to me so I would have something good to tell at supper.
So that night, when my stepdad asked me, "How was your day?" I happily told about my ride to school on my friend's Vespa.
Dinner came to a dead stop. My mother blew up like a bomb! She exploded at me screaming about how extremely dangerous "motorcycles" are, and how I had not only done something deplorable which I very well knew she'd disapprove of, but I had defiantly thrown it in her face right there at the dinner table. She screamed so loud she could hear no protests from either me or my fairly assertive stepdad.
She ended dinner, sent me weeping into my room, and she added that I would be punished severely for this misdeed. No matter what I said, she wasn't listening. I tried pointing out that if I'd known it was wrong, and believed she would react like that, I never would've told her about it (or done it in the first place).
I had sent her many letters and photos the previous summer telling her enthusiastically and in detail about riding on Vespas and she had never objected. I had talked about it in front of her and many others when I returned from Italy, and neither she nor anyone had said anything was wrong about it. And, of course, it was completely useless to attempt to explain that a motorcycle and a motor scooter are different.
When my mother wanted to punish me, one thing she did was to make extra appointments with my psychotherapist, a woman so awful and outright evil I have never really written much about her here. (If you've read my Featured story you know about my mother; this unlicensed so-called therapist was her partner in crime). I cried while my mother assigned me double therapy sessions for six miserable weeks.
Then my mother announced that she and the therapist were going to come up with a more severe punishment for me as well. I could only begin to imagine. Punishment was Mom's favorite part about being a mother.
When I saw the therapist she told me that I would be locked up in the city morgue all night amidst dead bodies to teach me about safety and "motorcycles." And, she added, with her sadistic smile, "We don't care how much it upsets you!"
My first instinctive reaction was to want to laugh. After what my mother had put me through over the years, why would I be afraid of a bunch of [i]dead[/i] people?!
Dead people don't scream at you or slap you across the face. They don't tell you that you are disgusting, that everything you say sounds stupid, that you don't deserve love, that you are an awkward ugly embarrassment, that you never do anything right...There's a lot to be said for dead people! In fact, hanging out with mangled corpses would be a vast improvement over any evening spent with my mother, the Red Queen.
I thought fast, realizing that if they knew I wasn't afraid, they'd cancel the morgue visit and think of something much more sadistic. So I tried to look shaken and terrified, begged the therapist not to allow such a horrifying punishment. I felt like Brer Rabbit talking to Brer Fox in the Joel Chandler Harris tales ("Please, Brer Fox, [i]Don't throw me in that briar patch!!!")[/i]
They never did it. I am not sure why. Maybe the therapist figured out I was faking my fear. Or, more likely, my stepdad intervened and stopped it. I had to do my time seeing the therapist twice a week but no visit to the morgue happened.
Years later, I found out my mother had told all her friends (whom I called her henchstaff) and noted in the records of the Communist Party that I was a real problem and a defiant teen who was "running around the country on motorcycles with men."
I was delighted because I had spent that year's summer in Rome, Italy visiting my father. I had spent most of the summer riding around with people on Vespas, seeing the sights. I had gone out on my first date ever with an Italian man on his Vespa. We had gone on a picnic to a monastery and it had been fun and a bit romantic.
I had written a lot of letters and postcards about the fun I was having. I wrote letters twice a week to my mother (she never answered any of them). I sent postcards and pictures, including photos of me riding back seat on a Vespa on the Via Veneto in Rome.
My kind and wise stepfather, Sidney, insisted we only discuss pleasant subjects at our dinner table. This stopped my mother from endlessly picking fights with me at dinner, and that made me happy. Every day I would try to remember all the good things that happened to me so I would have something good to tell at supper.
So that night, when my stepdad asked me, "How was your day?" I happily told about my ride to school on my friend's Vespa.
Dinner came to a dead stop. My mother blew up like a bomb! She exploded at me screaming about how extremely dangerous "motorcycles" are, and how I had not only done something deplorable which I very well knew she'd disapprove of, but I had defiantly thrown it in her face right there at the dinner table. She screamed so loud she could hear no protests from either me or my fairly assertive stepdad.
She ended dinner, sent me weeping into my room, and she added that I would be punished severely for this misdeed. No matter what I said, she wasn't listening. I tried pointing out that if I'd known it was wrong, and believed she would react like that, I never would've told her about it (or done it in the first place).
I had sent her many letters and photos the previous summer telling her enthusiastically and in detail about riding on Vespas and she had never objected. I had talked about it in front of her and many others when I returned from Italy, and neither she nor anyone had said anything was wrong about it. And, of course, it was completely useless to attempt to explain that a motorcycle and a motor scooter are different.
When my mother wanted to punish me, one thing she did was to make extra appointments with my psychotherapist, a woman so awful and outright evil I have never really written much about her here. (If you've read my Featured story you know about my mother; this unlicensed so-called therapist was her partner in crime). I cried while my mother assigned me double therapy sessions for six miserable weeks.
Then my mother announced that she and the therapist were going to come up with a more severe punishment for me as well. I could only begin to imagine. Punishment was Mom's favorite part about being a mother.
When I saw the therapist she told me that I would be locked up in the city morgue all night amidst dead bodies to teach me about safety and "motorcycles." And, she added, with her sadistic smile, "We don't care how much it upsets you!"
My first instinctive reaction was to want to laugh. After what my mother had put me through over the years, why would I be afraid of a bunch of [i]dead[/i] people?!
Dead people don't scream at you or slap you across the face. They don't tell you that you are disgusting, that everything you say sounds stupid, that you don't deserve love, that you are an awkward ugly embarrassment, that you never do anything right...There's a lot to be said for dead people! In fact, hanging out with mangled corpses would be a vast improvement over any evening spent with my mother, the Red Queen.
I thought fast, realizing that if they knew I wasn't afraid, they'd cancel the morgue visit and think of something much more sadistic. So I tried to look shaken and terrified, begged the therapist not to allow such a horrifying punishment. I felt like Brer Rabbit talking to Brer Fox in the Joel Chandler Harris tales ("Please, Brer Fox, [i]Don't throw me in that briar patch!!!")[/i]
They never did it. I am not sure why. Maybe the therapist figured out I was faking my fear. Or, more likely, my stepdad intervened and stopped it. I had to do my time seeing the therapist twice a week but no visit to the morgue happened.
Years later, I found out my mother had told all her friends (whom I called her henchstaff) and noted in the records of the Communist Party that I was a real problem and a defiant teen who was "running around the country on motorcycles with men."
70-79, F
