My mother was not what I would call a sympathetic mother. She was not the sort to coddle and cuddle her children. She was a firm believer in the stance “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.” And consequently, she gave us some rules for the world and set us free to explore on our own with an instruction to not scream and holler unless we were bleeding or dying. She relied heavily on the fear technique.
The instructions were simple:
The mother from my childhood was not exactly the kind of mother who was prone to messing around. She strongly believed in spanking (as did my father) and she also strongly believed in the idea that children, if they were not bleeding or dying, did NOT need to scream. I remember when I was about 6, I couldn't swim and we were at my grandparent’s lake house. I ran to the end of the dock and jumped off into the lake. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble and I was doggie paddling as fast as I could to get back to the shore, but then I panicked and started going under water. My mom didn't panic, she calmly walked to the end of the dock, stripping as she went, executed a perfect dive, reached me in seconds and pulled me to safety.
In a crisis, my mom was the one to have around. She never lost her head… until AFTER the fact. I got a stern talking to about how I almost died in that water. I believed her and as I sat coughing up water and shivering on the shore, I was repentant.
When I was nine, my brother and I were playing “king of the picnic table” in the backyard. My brother was seven, and he pushed me off the picnic table, proclaiming his victory. I landed on my right hand and heard an audible snap. Ensue hysterical screaming. My mother came out to see what the commotion was. She stopped 10 feet away, however. "I’m not coming a step closer until you hush up that screaming," she said. I hushed. She came close and felt of my arm. "It doesn't feel broken," she said, so off we went to church. I held my arm, black and blue, for the entire church meeting, my dad insisting it was fine.
At the end of the church meeting, they prayed for God’s healing to come to my arm. That healing took about 6 weeks to get there, and during those weeks my arm was surrounded by pink plaster of paris.
When I was ten, my brothers and I were playing in the woods, climbing a rock wall. Chad, the eight year old, grabbed a rock to throw off the wall we were on. His aim went vastly wrong and the rock ended up hitting me above the eye. I was bleeding profusely as I stumbled off the hill, walked determinedly home, and went inside the house: Mom? Mom, I think I’m hurt. I’m bleeding, I said as calmly as I could. She examined my eye, put me in the car and headed for the ER. Seven blue stitches later, I was headed home. I had more than my share of stitches growing up, mostly at the hands of my brothers.
But my brothers, especially Chad, were not entirely injury free. Chad had the dangerous combination of guts and intelligence. He was always dreaming up brilliant inventions with the neighborhood Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. One of these inventions was a jet engine. It was made with a modified hair dryer, gasoline, and a lawnmower starter. It resulted in an explosion in Jimmy Neutron’s garage and a week of suspended privileges for ruining his mother’s hair dryer.
Chad was obsessed with flying machines. He thought that he should be able to modify his bike, scooter, or body so that he could fly, and generally his launch pad was our roof. He started out by stealing sheets and blankets for parachutes and wing covers. It was one scheme like this that had him on the roof with a glider made from sticks, chicken wire, sheets and two by fours. He had spent weeks designing a glider that would be launched on the first windy day. He chose the southwest corner of the house to launch his glider, which was unfortunate because it was the only corner of the house with a tree nearby. When Chad jumped off that roof with his wings of wire, he flew for about 4 feet, which was just far enough to land him directly over the tree that he fell into, hitting every branch on the way down. Chad landed on the ground below the tree hollering holy murder and holding his left arm. I came outside to see what the screaming was about and immediately returned to the house to get my mother.
My mother stopped ten feet away, telling him to hush up the screaming or she wouldn’t come a step closer. He hushed up and she took him immediately to the hospital for his own 6 weeks of casted arm. Another time, my brother set up a ladder and climbed up it to swing from the lovely wire that connected the garage to the house in order to power the garage with electricity.
Reaching the top of the ladder, Chad at the tender age of six, grabbed on with both hands and felt the lovely current coursing through his veins. My dad was nearby and knocked the ladder from under him, and caught Chad when he let go. John Mark, the youngest brother, seemed to learn from our experiences and didn’t try anything too crazy until he was out of the house. Somehow he survived his childhood without stitches, broken bones, or minor surgeries.
When I had children of my own, I was pretty sure my mom would have mellowed out and become the good grandma who bakes cookies and coddles her grandchildren. I could not have been more wrong. I came to pick up my kids a few weeks ago, who are now 8, 6, and 5, and found my mother sitting in a chair with an exhausted look on her face. My boys were passed out on the floor and my daughter was nowhere to be found.
The police came today, Mom! my daughter said excitedly when I found her.
I looked at my mom quizzically.
She smiled weakly.
Apparently my children were given free reign of the field and creek behind her apartment in central dallas fort worth. They found the manhole and had never learned the rule about death associated with manholes. The police were called by a concerned neighbor who thought that my children were not being supervised well enough in a dangerous area. My mom scoffed. It was not dangerous, and YOU should have taught them that manholes and storm sewers result in death, she said. Point taken.
The instructions were simple:
- Every man you encounter is dangerous. He will probably abduct you from a gas station or other location, and you will disappear forever. He will do horrible nameless things to you. He will kill you. You will never see us again. So you had better beware of men. She told us stories about her friend from high school who went to a gas station and was kidnapped and disappeared from the face of the earth never to be seen or heard from again. Her bones were later found on the edge of the town. There’s no telling what that man who abducted her did to her, but he probably barbecued her and served her to the sheriff. It happens. It happens ALL. THE. TIME. People in panel vans only drive them so that they can kidnap innocent children. Stay far away from them. It is for this reason, I have had an irrational fear of vans and strange men my entire life. When I was a child, I didn’t dream about monsters and creatures under my bed, I dreamt about strange men, coming through my window to kidnap me and take me to a far away place. I can tell you I never, EVER talked to a strange man as a child. Once, a man approached us to ask if we had seen his dog, and I ordered my brothers to run for the hills, and I followed. We ran from that man like he was Adolf Hiltler surrounded by SS Guards with submachine guns. Talking to men meant you would end up dead. And it wouldn’t be a pleasant death.
- Rule Number 2 was never climb up radio/electric towers. You know those giant towers made of metal about 3 stories high? We were never to come anywhere close to them. These towers were dangerous for two reasons: (1.) If you climbed them, you were placing yourself at risk of being hit by a bolt of lightning from anywhere in a 40 mile radius. If there was a bolt of lightning to be had, it would hit you if you were climbing one of those towers. (2.) Those towers were notoriously unstable and might send bolts of electricity down their metal legs and through your body. You would not be able to let go until you were dead. This happened to one of my mom’s brother’s friends, tragically both struck by lightning AND electrocuted by the tower at the same time. He was stuck like a magnet to the tower for a few moments, then he was blown 40 feet to the field below. He was dead. And if you climbed a tower, you would end up dead too. I never climbed a tower, in fact, just to be safe, I avoided the general vicinity of any towers I saw. And telephone poles. I figured they were almost as high and there was no reason to place myself in undue danger.
- Rule three was never go through storm sewer pipes or down manholes, or anywhere near street gutters. There were these huge pipes that a child could stand up straight in, that connected the creek on one side of the street to the creek on the other side of the street. These tunnels went underground and could go for miles underground, connecting storm sewers and street water runoff creeks for an entire neighborhood. My mother told us that we should not go near those, and we definitely shouldn’t go in them. She knew some boys once who went in them and a flashflood filled them up in a split second and they died. If we went in them, even on a sunny day, there was always the risk that a flash flood would ensue and we would be drowned instantly. Oddly, we were allowed to play in the runoff creek, probably because it did not enclose us in a spherical tube, and we would not die.
The mother from my childhood was not exactly the kind of mother who was prone to messing around. She strongly believed in spanking (as did my father) and she also strongly believed in the idea that children, if they were not bleeding or dying, did NOT need to scream. I remember when I was about 6, I couldn't swim and we were at my grandparent’s lake house. I ran to the end of the dock and jumped off into the lake. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble and I was doggie paddling as fast as I could to get back to the shore, but then I panicked and started going under water. My mom didn't panic, she calmly walked to the end of the dock, stripping as she went, executed a perfect dive, reached me in seconds and pulled me to safety.
In a crisis, my mom was the one to have around. She never lost her head… until AFTER the fact. I got a stern talking to about how I almost died in that water. I believed her and as I sat coughing up water and shivering on the shore, I was repentant.
When I was nine, my brother and I were playing “king of the picnic table” in the backyard. My brother was seven, and he pushed me off the picnic table, proclaiming his victory. I landed on my right hand and heard an audible snap. Ensue hysterical screaming. My mother came out to see what the commotion was. She stopped 10 feet away, however. "I’m not coming a step closer until you hush up that screaming," she said. I hushed. She came close and felt of my arm. "It doesn't feel broken," she said, so off we went to church. I held my arm, black and blue, for the entire church meeting, my dad insisting it was fine.
At the end of the church meeting, they prayed for God’s healing to come to my arm. That healing took about 6 weeks to get there, and during those weeks my arm was surrounded by pink plaster of paris.
When I was ten, my brothers and I were playing in the woods, climbing a rock wall. Chad, the eight year old, grabbed a rock to throw off the wall we were on. His aim went vastly wrong and the rock ended up hitting me above the eye. I was bleeding profusely as I stumbled off the hill, walked determinedly home, and went inside the house: Mom? Mom, I think I’m hurt. I’m bleeding, I said as calmly as I could. She examined my eye, put me in the car and headed for the ER. Seven blue stitches later, I was headed home. I had more than my share of stitches growing up, mostly at the hands of my brothers.
But my brothers, especially Chad, were not entirely injury free. Chad had the dangerous combination of guts and intelligence. He was always dreaming up brilliant inventions with the neighborhood Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius. One of these inventions was a jet engine. It was made with a modified hair dryer, gasoline, and a lawnmower starter. It resulted in an explosion in Jimmy Neutron’s garage and a week of suspended privileges for ruining his mother’s hair dryer.
Chad was obsessed with flying machines. He thought that he should be able to modify his bike, scooter, or body so that he could fly, and generally his launch pad was our roof. He started out by stealing sheets and blankets for parachutes and wing covers. It was one scheme like this that had him on the roof with a glider made from sticks, chicken wire, sheets and two by fours. He had spent weeks designing a glider that would be launched on the first windy day. He chose the southwest corner of the house to launch his glider, which was unfortunate because it was the only corner of the house with a tree nearby. When Chad jumped off that roof with his wings of wire, he flew for about 4 feet, which was just far enough to land him directly over the tree that he fell into, hitting every branch on the way down. Chad landed on the ground below the tree hollering holy murder and holding his left arm. I came outside to see what the screaming was about and immediately returned to the house to get my mother.
My mother stopped ten feet away, telling him to hush up the screaming or she wouldn’t come a step closer. He hushed up and she took him immediately to the hospital for his own 6 weeks of casted arm. Another time, my brother set up a ladder and climbed up it to swing from the lovely wire that connected the garage to the house in order to power the garage with electricity.
Reaching the top of the ladder, Chad at the tender age of six, grabbed on with both hands and felt the lovely current coursing through his veins. My dad was nearby and knocked the ladder from under him, and caught Chad when he let go. John Mark, the youngest brother, seemed to learn from our experiences and didn’t try anything too crazy until he was out of the house. Somehow he survived his childhood without stitches, broken bones, or minor surgeries.
When I had children of my own, I was pretty sure my mom would have mellowed out and become the good grandma who bakes cookies and coddles her grandchildren. I could not have been more wrong. I came to pick up my kids a few weeks ago, who are now 8, 6, and 5, and found my mother sitting in a chair with an exhausted look on her face. My boys were passed out on the floor and my daughter was nowhere to be found.
The police came today, Mom! my daughter said excitedly when I found her.
I looked at my mom quizzically.
She smiled weakly.
Apparently my children were given free reign of the field and creek behind her apartment in central dallas fort worth. They found the manhole and had never learned the rule about death associated with manholes. The police were called by a concerned neighbor who thought that my children were not being supervised well enough in a dangerous area. My mom scoffed. It was not dangerous, and YOU should have taught them that manholes and storm sewers result in death, she said. Point taken.
I love it! I like what direction you're taking lately...outing people! hahah Keep it up!
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