So in the spirit of sharing a stash of memories, unexpurgated, I'm going to offer a blog post explaining why I won't be changing my profile picture... Some of you have heard this one before, but so it goes. I repeat myself.
When I was thirteen years old or so (7th grade, I think), my father took me to an award ceremony at the our local High School. It was one of those standard affairs for school sports. You sit around for three hours while every coach calls up the team and hands a letter of participation to each kid that was on the team. I had been on some feeder league swim team. My father, being my father, brought a flask.
An hour or two into the ceremony, my friend Drew decided that he was going to go to the bathroom. I was kind of bored, so I decided to go with him. As we were leaving the gym locker room, Drew started to monkey around on the bleachers. We must have lost track of the time, because the next thing I knew I was picked up and thrown into the wall. It seems that we had been in the gym so long that we had missed our turn to take our awards. My father was not happy about this in any sense.
He had just wasted two hours of his time and been made to look like an ass when his kid didn't show. He hustled me out to his truck, shoving me through the lobby doors. We lived about 15 minutes from the high school. My father spent the drive home hitting me. He screamed about how he'd be damned if he were going to waste his time sitting around some school lunch room only to be made to look like a jackass when my name was called.
I cowered in the passenger side of the truck and tried to get as close to the passenger door as I could. I sat and said "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And my father swung and swung as he cursed me. I would throw my hands in front of my face to try to block the blows and say, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." And my father would pull my hands down to make sure that he had a clean shot at me. And I cowered in the passenger side of my father's truck as my head bounced off of the window. "I'm sorry," I'd say, "I'm sorry." And he would pull my hands from in front of my face to make sure that he drove home another blow. I'm not sure those of you who think that I repeat myself have any idea what repetition even means.
I was going through a bit of a religious phase at the time. As I sat and sobbed my apologies, I prayed to god that we wouldn't get in an accident. My father was drunk and blind with rage. I think the posted speed limit on that two lane road was somewhere around 30 to 40 mph. My father was going at least 70 miles an hour the whole way home. And as he would pull my hands from in front of my face to ensure that he had a clean shot at my head, as he swung and swung, his body torqued so hard that we swerved back and forth all over the road. And I sat and said "I'm sorry, I'm sorry" and prayed that we would be pulled over so that it would stop.
We weren't pulled over. There was no accident. You can decide for yourself whether or not that was an answered prayer. As my father was driving as fast as he was, I only had to endure this for 10 minutes or so that night.
When we'd made it back to our house, my brother got some ice from the freezer and did his best to get the bleeding under control before putting me into bed. When I went for my root canal later in the year and the oral surgeon asked if I'd sustained any sports related injuries in the previous year, I had no idea how to answer the question.
I'd asked my mother, once, when we were on speaking terms, what she would talk about with my father when she came home to find me bleeding in bed.
"I told him that if he kept it up it could be considered child abuse," she said.
"How many times did you have that conversation, ma?" I asked.
"Too many," she said.
"Ok, ma," I said.
"It wasn't all bad," she said, "We went to the shore for a week every summer."
You tell me I repeat myself. I don't repeat myself. I remember.
I remember every dish from our kitchen table flying inches past my head as my father threw them against the wall. I remember being carried across a plank over broken glass as the police escorted us from our house. I remember being kicked up a flight of stairs. How could I forget? It was beaten into me.
If you want to share memories, I'm all for it. I'll sit and swap them all day long. If you want have fun swapping pics of favorite childhood cartoon characters, go at it. Don't tell me that you're doing something about child abuse, though.
You want to do something about child abuse? Volunteer at a shelter. Donate to a charity. Give me something more than a profile picture.
To try to say that you're doing something about child abuse by changing a profile pic is demeaning. As activism, it's insulting. You may as well turn me down for a date and tell me that you hope that we can still be friends.
There's a very real face to child abuse. That's while my profile pic will still be just that. My face.
This is excellent, Jesse. You've really got a way of drawing the reader into the story. I was completely in your world. I wish other people could read this.
ReplyDeleteI've taken a bit of flak for this one.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. I haven't gotten so far as to know whether or not I agree, but what difference does it make? It's your point-of-view and you express very well why. I don't see any reason to criticize.
ReplyDeleteThe general idea seems to be that anything is better than nothing. And that I've no right to denigrate any effort that someone else makes.
ReplyDeleteBottom line: how effective is this effort? You seem to think that it is ineffective, and that's why you don't like it. You offer ways that you think would be more effective. If you were putting down an effort that has been shown to be effective in combatting child abuse, then maybe your words would be deleterious to the cause. But I do not see it that way.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the FB thing. Unless someone can show that this kind of "effort" really does raise awareness and donations, I'm extremely dubious.