I was a quiet kid with books. I was a chatterbox once you knew me and I loved finding fun things to do even if the thing to do was chores. It didn’t matter to me if I had running water and I didn’t meet a computer until I was in high school.
I used to collect books from the Weekly Reader. I loved “science” kits for kids with stuff about stars, the solar system, and optical illusions. Animal things were great and I devoured Zoobooks except I got the sense that the subscription repeats after awhile. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was too young to realize there was work behind capturing fascinating pictures of deep sea exotic creatures. Can you imagine meeting an otherworldly alien by merely jumping into the deep blue?
I had an older brother. I thought the girls in church were pretty. It didn’t matter which church as we were typically rotating between at least two at any given time. And it didn’t matter which girl because they were all nice to me if I had nerve enough to say “Hello” which was a bit of a coin toss. I had a younger sister but we seemed to find ourselves walking down to different paths despite growing up together. She stopped making sense the first of all my family.
We were all smart and sometimes that meant we got along and played strategic rounds of the board game of the hour and sometimes that meant none of us would confess to being guilty of whatever the parents were upset about. Even if we all got punished, nobody would have a smeared reputation if no one confessed, eh?
I was wrong about that. My brother was a truther and would typically be caught giving up after a marvelous caper. He snuck into a school and stole a CD-ROM which was useless at the time and huge only to turn himself in to my parents and then get caught by the school security returning the damned thing. I never took back the mouse I lifted… for better or worse. I was a bit of a truther as well. I would assume a statute of limitations of about 2 years and then let the dirt out on myself with the implication that I had clearly outgrown such childish behavior. And mostly that worked. I don’t know what my sister did. She was generally agreeable but I was never thrilled at her ability to be sneaky. She didn’t quite have that down pat. Threatening to leak information meant that leaking said information was inevitable. Maybe, I dunno. I don’t quite remember that much about my siblings even though I grew up with them. I got two more little siblings later, but they’re different. A different matter entirely with high hopes quite separate from the older brother and one sister.
I failed initially, but I wanted the ability to keep to myself. I wanted so much to be self-sufficient that I would skip grocery trips for the solitude of my own space. I didn’t like being alone, but I liked having the opportunity. It seemed tactical to be able to be alone because then I didn’t require approval. I didn’t have many choices that I felt I could make and express individuality so I made that one and stuck to it.
Rebellion was something of an accident. It was learned because most of the time I felt like I was in trouble before I was aware of what the crime was. Sure, after the fact it was true that I had known the rules before I committed the crime… most of the time, I just didn’t seem capable of following simple directions such as not stealing change from my mom’s purse or not using my pencil on my desk (I was just trying to get all the craft-time glue off of it). I ended up getting paddled by well meaning and harmless teachers. Harmless, because I wore corduroys. One time I got in trouble worth spankings and I was penalized further for backing away from said punishment and by the time the number of lashes hit 40 I was determined not to give in. I don’t see how any number above 40 is worst than knowing you gave up at that point. You might as well earn the high score and a sense of pride with the loss.
I was black-sheeped a little. Parents will do that when they get immature because kids don’t have anywhere to go. I think one of the things parents should know is that it’s really easy to cut self-esteem out of a person. All you have to do is make every little decision a kid makes into a fight. Kids don’t have the kind of energy to hold up and realize that they aren’t creating the problem. After all, we’re used to making lots of mistakes anyway. What’s 5,000 more? Just a little self confidence, that’s all.
I lived a sheltered life, but the library provided an unexpected back door into adult themes. I quickly learned how to describe seedy books in benign ways that would illustrate my love of literature when the broad swaths of literature were not nearly as interesting as swords and mermaids preferably held in the hands of the hero simultaneously.
I developed this quiet surface and boiling interior as growing up seemed to just add intensity to everything. I wrote dark poetry and drew twisted doodles for the appreciative disturbing glances of my classmates. I worked hard to create the possibility to one classmate that I might be the devil incarnate and to have her believe that the devil would actually be quite civil in person.
I didn’t fight drag out fights. When I left the house, I snuck. The only time I apologized to authority was if a friend would get in trouble. I got along with moms in a weird way that contributed. And maybe it’s because I was harmless. I was pretty much convinced that the first woman I nailed would be pregnant and I didn’t feel like dragging her into my mire until I changed the rules internally sometime in college. I tended to get a pass with people’s daughters for some reason anyway. Maybe it made sense and maybe it didn’t.
But everywhere I went, there was authority. And it scathed me the way authority represented that it was in charge and therefore had a right to be in charge. Else anarchy it threatened. If there were no rules there would be anarchy and everybody knows how bad anarchy is. No. I think anarchy is self-correcting. The rules keep coming back in some way no matter how many times I try to ignore them all.
But I’ve gotten better at making up my own rules and working them out with just those close to me and nobody else. I don’t know if I’d recommend this strategy in general because rebellion and I have come a long way and we’ve learned to coexist. We’re good friends actually and it’s one of those relationships you might need to understand before imitating me.
