Tuesday, March 09, 2004
A thoughty one for a change
This is a post I have been mulling over and making mental notes on for a bit. It started with this post by maneaterlad
Sometimes, I think of an Alternate Universe Me. This AUMe didn't get out of South Caroline then he finished high school. Maybe he didn't finish high school. Maybe this AUMe actually did take a gun into school when he got tired of being bullied by Mike O. AUMe lives in a trailer behind his mom's house and works a shit job for minimum wage, a McJob that isn't going to take him anywhere and he knows it. Maybe he gave school another try, but it didn't work out. This AUMe is the Unlucky One. I think about him sometimes when I'm not entirely pleased with the direction my own life is going. I think about him and I'm suddenly a lot more thankful for what I have and the breaks I've caught. Have you thought of your alternatives today?
I will eventually (maybe) post a longer answer. But there is one crucial point I kind of stuck at, probably because I had no solid answer.
One day when I was in 5th grade, I was playing across the street from our house, floating stick boats in a little irrigation ditch. My mom called me to come home, but I pretended not to hear. So in a little bit, she sent my 6 year old brother to fetch me.
The street we lived on was a semi-busy one, and our house was on one side of a little rise, which cut off the forward view of drivers taking that route. A lady going just a bit too fast came along at just the wrong moment and hit my little brother as he was crossing the road.
He didn't die. It broke both his legs and did some other damage, but physically he was okay eventually. That's not the problematical part.
As far as I recall, Mom never blamed me for what happened, or, if she did, she never said so. No problem, I blamed myself enough for both of us and then some.
Way back then (the mid 60s), children didn't have visiting privileges at hospitals. But sometimes I (as oldest) went with Mom to keep her company on the drive over and back, and sat in the lobby waiting. On one visit, I was reading (always, always reading) one of those men's magazines from the coffee table, Argosy or some such. There was an article about spontaneous human combustion in one.
Now that I am older, it's pretty easy to track the psychological path of my sudden neurosis, especially given my Southern Baptist upbringing, which wasn't shy about pointing out the danger of eventual hell-fire to sinners. But at the time, I didn't know WHY. I just was all of a sudden totally convinced I was DEFINITELY going to spontaneously burst into flames one of these days. I mean, I was conVINced! I would lay awake at night, afraid to fall asleep, because if it happened at night in the bedroom I shared with my little sister, SHE wouldn't have a clue as to what to do to save me. Not that anyone probably would in any of the places I normally found myself. I was quite sure I was doomed to a hideous painful early death.
Of course, since Mom was so worried about my brother, I never mentioned my fear to her, or to any of my younger siblings. Eventually I did get over it, by slowly working out counter arguments to the examples listed in the lurid article, and deciding that perhaps all that stuff wasn't 100% true....
So. The brother in question had other problems, maybe or maybe not made worse by the accident and everything that followed it. But he eventually became a child molester, a thief, basically a sociopath preying on anyone foolish enough to trust him. He has hurt a lot of people I care about.
The question I came up with is this: If I somehow had a choice, would I choose to take what came later and let it all play out like it happened? Or would I risk MY mental health by choosing to let him be killed quickly and relatively painlessly while he was still an innocent child? (Thinking that if him just getting badly hurt was so traumatic to me, what would have happened if he had died?)
There is of course the option where I respond right away to my mom's call...but some of the other causative factors would still have been there *cough*alcoholic dad*cough*, so that might not change things enough either....
I just don't know.
Sometimes, I think of an Alternate Universe Me. This AUMe didn't get out of South Caroline then he finished high school. Maybe he didn't finish high school. Maybe this AUMe actually did take a gun into school when he got tired of being bullied by Mike O. AUMe lives in a trailer behind his mom's house and works a shit job for minimum wage, a McJob that isn't going to take him anywhere and he knows it. Maybe he gave school another try, but it didn't work out. This AUMe is the Unlucky One. I think about him sometimes when I'm not entirely pleased with the direction my own life is going. I think about him and I'm suddenly a lot more thankful for what I have and the breaks I've caught. Have you thought of your alternatives today?
I will eventually (maybe) post a longer answer. But there is one crucial point I kind of stuck at, probably because I had no solid answer.
One day when I was in 5th grade, I was playing across the street from our house, floating stick boats in a little irrigation ditch. My mom called me to come home, but I pretended not to hear. So in a little bit, she sent my 6 year old brother to fetch me.
The street we lived on was a semi-busy one, and our house was on one side of a little rise, which cut off the forward view of drivers taking that route. A lady going just a bit too fast came along at just the wrong moment and hit my little brother as he was crossing the road.
He didn't die. It broke both his legs and did some other damage, but physically he was okay eventually. That's not the problematical part.
As far as I recall, Mom never blamed me for what happened, or, if she did, she never said so. No problem, I blamed myself enough for both of us and then some.
Way back then (the mid 60s), children didn't have visiting privileges at hospitals. But sometimes I (as oldest) went with Mom to keep her company on the drive over and back, and sat in the lobby waiting. On one visit, I was reading (always, always reading) one of those men's magazines from the coffee table, Argosy or some such. There was an article about spontaneous human combustion in one.
Now that I am older, it's pretty easy to track the psychological path of my sudden neurosis, especially given my Southern Baptist upbringing, which wasn't shy about pointing out the danger of eventual hell-fire to sinners. But at the time, I didn't know WHY. I just was all of a sudden totally convinced I was DEFINITELY going to spontaneously burst into flames one of these days. I mean, I was conVINced! I would lay awake at night, afraid to fall asleep, because if it happened at night in the bedroom I shared with my little sister, SHE wouldn't have a clue as to what to do to save me. Not that anyone probably would in any of the places I normally found myself. I was quite sure I was doomed to a hideous painful early death.
Of course, since Mom was so worried about my brother, I never mentioned my fear to her, or to any of my younger siblings. Eventually I did get over it, by slowly working out counter arguments to the examples listed in the lurid article, and deciding that perhaps all that stuff wasn't 100% true....
So. The brother in question had other problems, maybe or maybe not made worse by the accident and everything that followed it. But he eventually became a child molester, a thief, basically a sociopath preying on anyone foolish enough to trust him. He has hurt a lot of people I care about.
The question I came up with is this: If I somehow had a choice, would I choose to take what came later and let it all play out like it happened? Or would I risk MY mental health by choosing to let him be killed quickly and relatively painlessly while he was still an innocent child? (Thinking that if him just getting badly hurt was so traumatic to me, what would have happened if he had died?)
There is of course the option where I respond right away to my mom's call...but some of the other causative factors would still have been there *cough*
I just don't know.
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