Cowardice

In this month of introspection, I am also revisiting some of my past sins - things that still bother me, things that will never let me be.  I suppose a third person might say they are not terrible, but I would disagree.  I have such a capacity to hurt others, and I haven't always kept it at bay.  There are several, but one has been visiting me more often lately, the day some thirty-five years ago when I hit Dan H. in the face. 

Dan was an awkward kid, and I am not sure he had many friends.  He tried a little too hard sometimes to fit in, and i don't think he was very successful.  I did not hate Dan, nor did I dislike him, but I hit him one day, and I don't think I will forgive myself

We were at the local bowling alley for our gym class the day it happened.  Every week we would load up in a bus and make the one-eighth mile trip to the bowling alley.  Once there, we were loud and raucous, no intention of becoming better bowlers.  We had adolescent fun, seeing how far we could throw the balls in the air down the alley, or how many lanes we could cross with one ball, even trying to hit a sign eight feet in the air halfway down the alley, with sixteen pound balls.  I am not sure why were never exiled from the place.

I was with a few friends that day, exercising new parameters of my stupidity when Dan must have said something to me I didn't like.  Left alone, I probably would have ignored it, or retorted in some equally crude manner.  But on this day, my associates didn't let me leave it alone.  They chided and goaded me to retaliate, not to take that kind of abuse from an oddball like him. I resisted their campaign for the moment, but the malice had been placed in my mind.  We finished our games and eventually went out to the bus.  I lagged behind and waited for Dan to get on the bus and into his seat.  My friends must have seen the look on my face, as they followed me slowly, a few feet behind.  As I made my way up the stairs, I still had no plan, but I knew I would do something, and I would do it soon.  When I got within a few feet of his seat, I heard a voice from behind me saying "hit him, hit him."  And I did, right in the face.   

I stood there for what seemed to be minutes staring at him.  I had hit him very hard, and when he brought his head back to look at me, there were tears in his eyes.  I felt like I had witnessed the assault instead of perpetrating it.  We were both lost, until a voice across the seat broke the silence.  It was a the voice of a man who I have come to detest, it was the voice of one of my football coaches tagging along to chaperone us.  He had come to be everything I would not want to be as  a teacher.  He didn't care about any of us,  was petty and cruel, and he rarely taught anything.  The fact that he was the one who admonished me that day make the whole affair more shameful. He saw me hit Dan, smiled his awful smile, then cautioned me in his terrible, sarcastic tone, "sit down Morsches, before he hits you back."  I knew then how despicable my deed was. 

I don't think about the physical pain I inflicted that day, or the fact that I had frightened him.  I think about how I humiliated him, when all he wanted to do was be accepted.  It was a horrible, horrible thing to do.  I had bad moments in high school, often thought I didn't connect as I should, but I had other things, other good things.  By in large my friends were very decent people, I had a good athletic career, and I never had to try to impress anyone to be accepted.  I gave Dan his moment though, and I don't know if he ever accrued the kind of attention he desired. For one moment, I was everything I detest in the world, everything I have fought since.  I was the bully, the ugliness that destroys young lives.

I looked for Dan in the intervening years, especially at reunions.  I wanted to apologize, to tell him what a coward I had been. Now I appreciate the folly in this quest, the absurd notion that Dan would want to come back to a reunion.  And I know why.

House

Every few years, I return to the town that I finished high school in. We were only there for two years, but I count it as my hometown. When I visit my friends, I stop by and look at our old house. It is a small, two story house typical of those in the Midwest - front facing the street, back the alley, and ten feet from another house on either side. It is a pleasant looking house from the outside. The last time I was there, I just parked on the street and looked at it for awhile. I sat there for a long time wondering how a house could look that nice from the outside and hold such terrible memories within.

I thought how people must have driven by this house for those two years we lived in it, not having any idea what was happening inside. I wondered how many houses were like this one across this country, the world even. Nice looking houses that kept their secrets inside, seemingly undamaged by the human horror within. I didn't hate the house, I just had no homesickness for it - it wasn't a home. It was a place I came home to, a place where I waited for my step-father to come home, praying he wasn't drunk, and if he was, praying that he would sleep. The worst time was between five and seven. At that time he could return home sober. If he wasn't home by seven, then I knew he was drunk.

I sat and thought about the memories I had of the various rooms of the house. I thought about the living room and the times he hit me there. Often, it was when I wasn't looking. Once he hit me just as I was about to take a drink from a pop can - I still wear the curved scar on my upper lip. I remembered the Christmas morning he stormed into the room and threw my little brother's toys outside in the back yard because we were making too much noise. Most of the mayhem happened in that living room, I would never think of calling it a family room.

The kitchen didn't bring back any better memories. I recalled being hit in the head from behind, full force, for not drying the dishes properly. For the first time in years, I remembered getting between my mother and my knife-wielding step-father as he raged out of control. He had the sense not to stab us, but I didn't know that at the time. I thought about the long flight of stairs up to the second story. I remembered having a date and him offering to get me a bottle of whiskey. I don't remember the date (the first and last), but I do remember getting home drunk, making it up to the second floor where he was waiting. He slapped me and knocked me down the entire flight of stairs. Oddly, my parents room was the only room that didn't engender any memories at all. I think I liked that room because if he was in it, he was asleep.

My room didn't bring any positive memories though, it was a place where I would sometimes hide when he lost control. Inevitably, I would go out and face him as I realized his fury was being directed at my mother or my sister. There just wasn't anywhere in that house that I felt good about.

I drove away slowly looking at other houses, wondering what was happening at that very moment, inside. I thought about my own house now, and hoped it meant something different to my two daughters. I hoped their memories would be good, pleasant ones, that the house was a place they loved to be in and would miss when they grew up. I wondered how they would remember me in the house, thinking I still had time to make sure it wasn't just a house, but a home.

A History of Violence

Violence is at least as old as any of my memories. I can attest to this. Maybe my step-father invented it? I don't know of anything in his background or environment that would have produced the fury and anger I saw so often. And I don't think it was the alcohol - I have known plenty of people who don't go nuts when they drink, no matter how much they drink. No, it was something inside that the booze helped free. Not that he needed to drink to get ugly, but that ugliness always came out when he was drunk. Even if he was in a good mood, or temporarily charming, even then it was always just around the corner.

For awhile, when I was in the sixth grade, we attempted to play family games on Sundays. This lasted for about a month. We would begin the game (Careers, Monopoly, Almanac Trivia, etc.) and it would go well for a short time. Inevitably, my father would lose, someone would laugh at his error or bad dice roll, or one of us did just a little too well. At that point the game board would get tossed, someone would get smacked, or he would just storm off. It was years before we all gave up trying, learning that any state of decency or fun was transient - better just to avoid interaction completely, not to get sucked in.

I was told that my step-father had to leave the state while still in High School. My mother said he has slapped a nun, and his parents sent him to a boy's school in Kentucky. Shortly thereafter, he wrecked his car while drinking, killing one of his friends. Once, when I was very young, a truck driver pulled out in front of us. My step-father chased him down (risking our lives), pulled him down out of the truck, and beat him senseless in the middle of the road. When I was in high school, he worked as a lineman for the city. One afternoon it was raining and he and his crew were in the barn playing cards and drinking. At some point he got mad at a co-worker (his best drinking friend at the time) and beat him unconscious with an electric meter. That man died a few years later of brain cancer, and I don't know if it was related to the incident in the barn. I do know he thought so....

I was up in my bedroom one night listening to the radio. I noticed a car pull up outside our house and a man got out and walked up to the door. I recognized him as the man my step-father had beaten a year or so earlier. There was another man in the car, in the drivers seat. He was enormous, bald, and irritated or nervous. The car was left running. I went down stairs and my step-father and his former friend were talking in the living room. He was asking my step-father to come out and have a drink with him, to bury the hatchet. I walked over and told my step-father I wanted to talk to him. I told him of the other man in the car outside, and he looked out the window to see. It was the first time I ever saw him frightened. He told his guest he didn't feel well and after a few awkward moments the man left. My step-father told me later, while drunk, that I had saved his life. I don't doubt it, but I often regretted it.

My father never beat me unconscious, but he often hit and slapped me. He was the absolute master of the sucker punch. He hardly ever squared off and struck me. When I was younger, it was occasional, as I tried to avoid him at all costs. By the time I was twelve, I was interceding for my mother and sister, and our conflicts increased. Usually he would hit me, I would try to hit him, and he would overpower and subdue me. It was never a proper fight per se until I was older. Then, almost over night, the roles reversed. By the time I was sixteen, I could hold him off and deflect much of what he threw my way. At that point, it was me choosing not to hurt him too badly.

My step-father and I clashed several times after I left the house, but we never fought seriously again. I would go on to have a few fights with peers and strangers while in high school and college, but I never really tried to hurt anyone. My brand of violence would be inward, and would take a heavy toll on me and those around me for several years to come.

*Okay, I have stolen a second movie title - they are just better than anything I can think of.

F Troop

My mother and step-father met in a mental institution - they were not employed there! They were married before my fifth birthday. I have little recollection of the years leading up to their union, and I am not sure which "memories" are real and which have been placed in my mind by family members. In any event, they are relevant as they form the foundation of my intellect which has guided my decision making processes for the past 45 years. The "pre-history" I am about to relay is probably a combination of real memories and the actualization of recounted stories. Or, as my grandfather used to say, "If it ain't true, it ought to be."
My mother had married my father when she was 17, pregnant with me. I have been told she had mental issues from an early age, and that the marriage was an act of rebellion on her part. Evidently, they had four very tumultuous years. I have very few memories or images of my father, other than a tall man fishing with me. One memory, or pseudo memory came from my maternal grandmother. She told a few years later that I had saved my mother's life. She said I had gone into my parents' room to find my father putting pills into my mother's mouth as she lay unconscious. I asked him what he was doing and he told me he was saving her life. Evidently I went into the other room and called my grandmother extolling his deeds. She called the police and an ambulance, and my parents were divorced a short time later. Now I can visualize this event clearly in my mind, but the construction of the event seems far too mature for a child of 4 or 5. My mother had a breakdown and ended up in the aforementioned institution, and I don't think I saw my father again.
Meanwhile, up the road a bit, my step-father was having his own issues. My mother told me years later that he had come home to his family (wife and two kids), and flew into a violent rage. He began beating his wife, and in order to stop him, his brother came over and shot him in the leg with a rifle. He was divorced shortly thereafter. He was a large, violent alcoholic who suffered from his own demons. He ended up in the same hospital for different reasons.
My mother and step-father got together soon after arriving at the hospital, and I do remember visiting them both. On one occasion, we could not see him as he and his roommates had seized control of their dorm (a bloodless coup that was quelled quickly) and hung a sheet from a second story window with the words "F Troop" written on it. It was twenty or more years before I appreciated the irony of that metaphor.
What I have learned from that amusing gesture (a group of mentally ill men adopting the moniker of a slapstick sitcom) is that no matter how cute or poignant the manifestations of mental illness can be, they are never funny. The sometimes charming rogue who led his peers in revolt would become a real life entity in my life, and he brought no humor to me for the next twelve years.
So, the manic-depressive alcoholic met his depressed suicidal second wife, and the fun was about to begin.............