Off the seat of a bicycle
Chapter 64     my family … what a destructive bunch

My younger brother, who was born brain damaged but with genuine feelings, was the only normal person to come out of that family hurricane … so it’s no wonder the whole family battered him.

As children growing up, there was no support for our human activities … and all attempts were diminished for whatever slight or artificial flaw that were spied … and our parent’s main job was to expose those flaws and exploit them for whatever educative purpose abuse serves.

Last year there was a TV commercial showing a little boy trying to hold up a good-sized fish and mug for the camera, but the fish slipped and he dropped it. I cringed darkly knowing the poor lad’s fate was a drubbing … but became astounded when the little boy just laughed happily and picked up the fish again. What the hell happened there?

In my family you would be beat-down lower than smeared dog-shit for dropping the fish. Why the hell did you drop the fish? We grew up in a ‘don’t drop the fish’ nightmare …only I didn’t see the nightmare … it was just the way we lived.

No wonder I became dislocated socially. There was no respite because we could never laugh about dropping a fish or flipping butter on the wall ... hell we couldn’t even go fishing, let alone fry one up in butter … we were never exposed to any activities in life other than a quiz bowl about table manners or the eyeballing-over for using a full napkin instead of the requisite half-sheet.

My older brother, the chosen one, never got whipped or thrown down the stairs, but he obviously suffered too. We were all stunted emotionally … and the area of brain dedicated to ‘feeling’ and ‘compassion’ was left to atrophy from vacated use.

When my father’s only brother, Uncle Bob died in the car accident, we were dis-allowed from sharing grief. My father handled it alone, and said nothing past the night when the phone call came in. And barely two words that night because everything was stuffed down tight.

We were soldiers, and if one fell, then the rest must march onward without casting a glance backwards or batting an eye … and maybe that’s why I couldn’t cry at Mom’s funeral.

The same rules were in place when our grandparents died one-by-one over the years … none of us kids attended the funerals or sent a card or flower back to Kansas. It was up to our parents to handle the grief silently, and then never speak of it again.

Good lord what created this empty war zone, and who were we fighting?

What horrific pain existed inside my mother and father so hard and deep that we couldn’t share anything? Not a touch or a hug. Never a kind word … only a constant performance-appraisal that raised only failing marks.

No wonder I rebelled against society’s prohibitions. No wonder I was a vandal and violently flashed anger at everyone within reach. There was nothing inside to work with.

So it is any wonder that a bicycle lover coming out of a family like that would become an activist who flashed hard against anyone who carelessly treaded on his right-of-way?

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