More About Growing Up in or around the old CP [I Hated My Childhood]
Some of you have read my story (my Featured story here under my Profile) about growing up as a reject of the old Soviet dominated Communist Party USA. My mother was a major player involved in internal Security in the CP and much feared by others. My mother was a sadistic sociopath who devoted her life to bringing about a socialist revolution with the CP in charge of it. I was rejected from CP youth training due to a problem my father had with the CP; don't yet know the details about that situation. All of my mother's friends had daughters being trained for the CP and my failure to be trained like they were made her really angry at me most of the time. She felt cheated of her rightful social status due to me and my father.
Now I would like to tell some stories about other kids I grew up with who also suffered from that kind of mistreatment. None of them were youth training rejects like me (the lowest social status position) but they certainly had their own problems. Like me, they suffered from having fanatic parents and from some kind of conflict with underground CP authority.
One guy I grew up with I will call Johnny (his first name). His mother was a lady I feared as much as I feared my own scary mother. Her name was Estelle.
When Johnny was 16, and got his driver's license, he took an interest in motorcycles. This was forbidden by the CP unless with special permission as an adult. So Johnny did some sneaking around to ride motorcycles. And, inevitably, he got caught. I say "inevitably" because the CP watched us all very carefully; I grew up with cameras in my room and people watching me wherever I went. It wasn't easy to get away with stuff under these circumstances. And I greatly admired Johnny for even trying.
From the moment he got caught, his punishment was obvious to anyone who knew him. His mother demoted him from teenager to small child. He had to go everywhere she went and nowhere on his own. She literally led him by the hand. And he was required to stand right next to her at all times. When it started, I had no idea why Johnny was acting like that, standing right next to his mother at social occasions and never leaving her side. She looked angry. He looked subdued, even a little scared which amazed me as he was a pretty brave and bold kid. No one would tell me what was going on except to say Johnny was "in trouble" with Estelle and it had something to do with him riding a motorcycle. He had to obey her like a five year old child; it lasted about a year or so. He would never talk about it which I well understood because I was always told to shut up about my own home life; everything I grew up around was a secret with the punishment for talking death if you were lucky; often torture preceeded death, though.
Eventually, Johnny did resolve his problems with his mother and her influence got him a job as a film director, a job I've heard he is very good at and has had much success with. He seems happy enough as an adult but I know he paid some serious dues for his adult success. I have seen him very infrequently since we grew up. Maybe I will run into him again one day. And will ask him some questions about his motorcycle years and other things. And he will probably tell me to jump off a cliff or something. He wouldn't be where he is today without the support of his mother and all those others (like my mother) who raised him and taught him to never discuss this with an untrained reject like me.
Now I would like to tell some stories about other kids I grew up with who also suffered from that kind of mistreatment. None of them were youth training rejects like me (the lowest social status position) but they certainly had their own problems. Like me, they suffered from having fanatic parents and from some kind of conflict with underground CP authority.
One guy I grew up with I will call Johnny (his first name). His mother was a lady I feared as much as I feared my own scary mother. Her name was Estelle.
When Johnny was 16, and got his driver's license, he took an interest in motorcycles. This was forbidden by the CP unless with special permission as an adult. So Johnny did some sneaking around to ride motorcycles. And, inevitably, he got caught. I say "inevitably" because the CP watched us all very carefully; I grew up with cameras in my room and people watching me wherever I went. It wasn't easy to get away with stuff under these circumstances. And I greatly admired Johnny for even trying.
From the moment he got caught, his punishment was obvious to anyone who knew him. His mother demoted him from teenager to small child. He had to go everywhere she went and nowhere on his own. She literally led him by the hand. And he was required to stand right next to her at all times. When it started, I had no idea why Johnny was acting like that, standing right next to his mother at social occasions and never leaving her side. She looked angry. He looked subdued, even a little scared which amazed me as he was a pretty brave and bold kid. No one would tell me what was going on except to say Johnny was "in trouble" with Estelle and it had something to do with him riding a motorcycle. He had to obey her like a five year old child; it lasted about a year or so. He would never talk about it which I well understood because I was always told to shut up about my own home life; everything I grew up around was a secret with the punishment for talking death if you were lucky; often torture preceeded death, though.
Eventually, Johnny did resolve his problems with his mother and her influence got him a job as a film director, a job I've heard he is very good at and has had much success with. He seems happy enough as an adult but I know he paid some serious dues for his adult success. I have seen him very infrequently since we grew up. Maybe I will run into him again one day. And will ask him some questions about his motorcycle years and other things. And he will probably tell me to jump off a cliff or something. He wouldn't be where he is today without the support of his mother and all those others (like my mother) who raised him and taught him to never discuss this with an untrained reject like me.
70-79, F
