Looking for other things I found this, from 2018. And I have to say, I’m impressed with myself.
Even from the basement you can hear the sound of Halloween fireworks. The dog, Ursula, is going spastic, following me everywhere I go, trying to hide under furniture, wishing that I could just make it stop.
Poor souls, dogs. They just don't understand that the ability to buy and serve food, and to open doors from either inside or outside, does not mean that you're all powerful.
If only it was that easy.
But maybe I'm just feeling the fatigue from too many years of being the “Go To Guy” for everyone around me.
At home, at work, at parties and on holiday, if something is stuck, I'm the guy to unstick it. If it's broken, I fix it. And if a finger has to be pointed, well sure as hell I'm the one it gets pointed at.
Dogs have it figured out.
Even though we were all raised on Lassie and Rin Tin Tin, and even though we all secretly believe that our four legged friends would drag us out of a burning automobile crash, the truth is that what dogs are good at, I mean really, really, good at, is appearing helpless so that we can feel like the Great Providers.
Which is funny, since all of us can recall a time when we too relied on our parents for everything, and when our only thought was to be loved and pampered and fed. When we had no thought of being generous, or understanding, or kind, or even helpful.
Or, it must be said, responsible.
I’m walking home from school, Grade One, down the side streets and alleys of Bowness. A random path, or so it probably looked, but it was never entirely so.
One part of my six year old consciousness worried about bullies, knowing that they could be around any corner. Those five blocks were like crossing downtown Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, waiting for the sound of the sniper rifle that could take me out at any moment, balancing the most direct route home with the least risk.
I was hyper-alert, and hyper-alive, in a six year old fashion.
Still, there's always time to look at the world around you. Today it's a dead cat. A very dead cat, probably a few days, in a back alley. Maggots, crawling out of a wound, a white, frothing mass. Repulsive or fascinating? At six years old is there much difference?
But back down the road are the bullies, three of them, older, meaner, scary in every way.
Maybe if I turn my coat inside out, make like it's reversible, they'll miss me, not recognize me for the weak victim that I am.
If you live your childhood in fear - and really, doesn't everyone? - you eventually wind up taking one of two paths.
I could have become the bully that I hated; beat back my weakness and fear into something bright and powerful inside of me; show everyone around me that I was just as tough and merciless as the kids who terrified me in school. Because bullies don't worry you if you can bully them back.
I could have become the Jock, the Punk, the Loudmouth, the Tough Kid hanging out behind the school smoking. And from there I could become the boss, the lawyer, the corporate giant walking over all of the little people on my way to the top.
The other path, my path, the path that was probably already planned by the time I saw that dead cat, is to become the helper, the friend, the rescuer, the confidante. While the bully is learning to be forceful, and to smother everyone around them with his own brand of selfishness, the helper is packing up all of those traits and burying them deep, deep down in a little box.
The more that I could ignore my own needs, the easier was for me to always bend to serve someone else, to learn to love whatever someone else loves, to behave in the ways that the people around me want me to behave.
I don't know if I learned this in the womb, but if not it got instilled pretty damn soon after. And the bullies figured that out just as early, and find that the best measure of their power and callousness is to get those of us who went down the other path to spin, spin, spin, trying desperately to do the Right Thing, until we fall, exhausted and demoralized, to the ground.
Then they laugh.
Anticipating other people's needs becomes natural after a while, a natural progression from anticipating danger. Some days it's playground bullies trailing you on the walk home, but equally often it's a father that lives on the edge of rage and irrationality. Either way, you pretty quickly figure out what the warning signs are, and what behaviors make you stand out. Because if you stand out, you're a target, and targets get hit.
The best solution is to not be there. If you're in another room, on another street, at school, you can avoid crossing paths.
The second best solution is to never, ever say anything. Every word is a minefield. Every sentence opens up an opportunity for attack. My father was too random, too crafty, and knew my weaknesses too well. With most people I could judge the circumstances and manage my ideas and speech to keep them happy, and myself safe, but at home you don't have that option.
The at-home habit quickly becomes the at-school habit, the at-the-library habit, the at-work habit, and the in-marriage habit.
By the time adulthood arrived I no longer had my own opinions; I’d buried them so deep that I’d forgotten that they exist. The mere idea of speaking out, of disagreeing, of stating a preference, becomes so frightening that it was inconceivable to me.
“What movie would you like to see?”
“Oh, I don't care.”
“What kind of pizza should we get.”
“I'm good with what you want. I'll just pick off the green peppers.”
“What kind of a job do you want?”
“Gosh, I'm happy with anything that pays the bills. I like any kind of work.”
“No, really, what do you want to do with your life?”
“Ah, well, I've always done the kind of work where I'm helping people... you know, charity work, that kind of stuff.”
“So that's what you love?”
“I guess.”
“So why aren't you doing that now?”
I always imagine myself as a quiet, fearful kid, but now and then I can manage some objectivity and realize that I also spent a fair bit of time “acting out.”
In Grade Three the principal gave me the strap, hard across both palms, as a punishment for throwing a rock at another student.
In Grade Four I punched another student in the ear, causing her to scream with pain.
In Grade Five I refused to do group projects with students that I felt were stupider or less sophisticated. I lorded my intelligence over others.
Funny that – teachers must have noticed this, must have told my parents, and for sure there was at least one session with some kind of psychologist. So what happened? Or more to the point, what didn't happen?
At the same time I understood that somehow those other students had things that I didn't. Sports skills, learned from fathers or siblings. Woodworking and carpentry skills from the same place. And a happy, safe home life, without the dark clouds that hung over my own home.
I knew that something was lacking, but at those early ages I didn't know what, just that there was a big empty part of myself.
And what does a child do with that kind of knowledge? Or, more critically, what did the teachers and principals and students and parents around me do with that knowledge, for surely it was as obvious to them as it would be to you, the adult, if you saw it today.
How close was I, the child lashing out at the world around him, to becoming the bully, the boss, the take-charge guy that would later be looked on as a great success? What was the point where the rage and insecurity was turned in, instead of out, was channelled towards hiding instead of conquering?
From what I gathered in later years, mostly from unguarded comments from my mother long after Dad was dead, he was quite the drinker in those days. I suspect that the Party Boy persona was part of what attracted her, even though his first wife had “walked onto a railway track and got hit by a train,” and he had more or less immediately given up his only son (not me, another one) for adoption by friends.
Or maybe she didn't learn all of this until later.
From the perspective of his future child, this was not an auspicious beginning. If I, pre-conception, had been looking for alarm bells, they would have been ringing loud and clear. But who ever asks the about to be conceived child for his opinion?
True story of how I was named:
My ex-wife: “Gee, Barry is a nice name.”
My mother: “Really? You think so?”
MEW: “Ah, yeah... why?”
MM: “I never liked it.”
MEW: “Ah... then why did you choose it?”
MM: “I didn't. I was passed out from anesthesia after the delivery, and when I woke up his father had filled out the forms and named him.”
At forty I discovered that not only had I been walking around with two names that I didn't like, and a surname that I REALLY didn't like, but my mother also hated them.
So one day the nice kid that was always helpful and thoughtful woke up, and realized that all of this was getting him no-where.
Bullies at school didn't care that he was nice. Teachers didn't care that he was nice. And sure as hell his father didn't give a good god damn that he was nice.
Instead he kept getting beat up, ignored, and trash-talked at every turn.
So at age seven he said “OK, if nice doesn't cut it, I'll adapt.”
He started small. Squished a footstep full of ants. Squashed a fly against the front window at his house. Pushed the cat off of the sofa. Gently, but he did it nonetheless.
A thrill passed over him every time. Guilt too, but in more or less equal balance. He could understand those competing emotions. After all, he had already spent many years watching and reading people, so he could certainly do it to himself.
“OK, I can do mean things; I can hurt things. And I can do them without getting caught, and without anything happening to me.”
Almost idly the thought settled into his mind, “How far can I go? Before getting into trouble. Before getting hurt? Before the guilt part is bigger than the thrill part?”
Obviously you can't start a journey like this at home, trying out your newfound ... power? ... yeah that could be it, on your family members. Being mean to your mother is out of the question – you need her for protection, at least for the time being. And picking on your little sister is just going to make things complicated – especially since you sort of do that already.
So out the door he went, and down the street.
Hmmm... bugs are one thing, but animals of the furry kind are different. Yes there are people who torture cats and dogs, who throw rocks at them and chase them, but he didn't want to be like that.
No, he decided, animals should be off limits. Aside from being pretty much helpless, and having never done anything to hurt him, there didn't seem to be much to be gained by being mean to animals.
OK, animals are out, bugs are in, but they get pretty boring pretty fast, and besides, everyone kills bugs.
But people? That's just too big, and too scary.
No, not ready to take on people yet. In time maybe.
But people's stuff, that's another thing. Looking around, up and down the street, he spied a old, bent nail in the dirt by a house under construction.
SCRRRRRTCH – across the paint on a car parked beside him on the street.
Again, looking around, and seeing no people.
SCRRRRTCH – again, above the first scratch.
And again, and again, over and over, a vicious tic-tac-toe on the doors and hood of the car.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. His breath was short.
He looked at what he had done, pocketed the nail, and walked away.