Outcast
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As an infant, I cried a lot. Like a LOT, if the stories are to be believed. Before my parents abandoned me, my mother left me crying alone in the house to get away from me, at least according to my grandmother. My grandmother said even she would leave me alone in the house while she worked in the front yard. Apparently I developed some strange self-soothing behaviors.
The first strange-ish behavior was when I was a baby. My grandmother said once I was able to be on my hands and knees, I would bang my head against the sides of the crib. Eventually they had to pad my crib. My grandfather fashioned some padding to fit inside my crib so I could bang my head against the wall without injuring myself. Once I was able to sit up, until I was probably 7 years old, I would sit on the couch and “rock”. By this, I mean I would lean forward and then launch myself backwards into the back of the couch. Repeatedly, for hours at a time. At night, when I was in bed and trying to get to sleep, I would also rock back and forth on my pillow. This rocking back and forth motion did a number on my hair and I would wake up with what my grandmother called a “rat’s nest” every morning. My grandmother had a brush with nylon bristles that she’d rip through my long, blonde hair to remove all the knots.
Eventually I was tall enough to use the rocking chair in the living room. I could rock for hours and listen to music on a little radio my step-father bought for me. When Bob would walk by and ask what I was doing, we had a little joke that I was “rocking to Rockingham”.
I was also a nail-biter, a nose-picker, and picked at the skin on my fingers. There are several photos in which I was digging for gold and a few where you can see me picking at my fingers. The skin-picking was a nervous habit I was unable to quit until I was an adult.
My first childhood memories are so fuzzy that I can’t tell if they are actually mine or fabricated visions from stories told to me by my grandmother. One possible memory is having scrambled eggs topped with maple syrup and when I complained how I didn’t like them, my grandmother told me I had to eat them because my doctor said so. I probably washed these down with instant coffee that my grandmother added an ice cube to so I could drink it more quickly before she had to take me to preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I’m guessing drinking coffee didn’t help my ability to sleep or the whole flinging myself against the couch back for hours at a time.
By the time I was in Kindergarten I was quiet and shy and my grandmother thought I wasn’t able to make many friends on my own. I had friends and wasn’t bullied, but I suppose I didn’t have “enough” friends for my grandmother to think I was popular or reflecting on her well enough. My grandmother saw this as a failure on my part and intervened by trying to bribe all the other kids to be friends with me. She bought little plastic bracelets for the girls and Hot Wheels for each boy in my class. I remember I had at least one good friend that year and I’m not sure the toys helped me make any other friendships beyond that afternoon. I still remember my Kindergarten teacher and friends from that time. A girl named Leslie that would lie on the floor next to me during naptime. One of the boys, whose identical twin was also in the class, would build castles for me out of wooden blocks. The class clown, Richard — we weren’t friends, really, but we got along. He was the kid that would draw on your shoes during naptime and would eat glue to get a laugh. I got along with most everyone in the class, save for one girl who thought her shit didn’t stink.
In Kindergarten I somehow learned how to read, despite that not being part of the curriculum. My grandmother was so proud that she called my mother to come to our house to hear me read. Maybe it got a reaction from my mother, but if it did, it wasn’t memorable. By first grade, I started struggling in class and my teacher finally realized it was because I couldn’t see. I needed glasses to see the chalkboard and looking back, I had probably needed glasses when I was in preschool but no one recognized it. I was constantly running into furniture and in my preschool photo, you can see how bruised my face was, supposedly because I ran into a bookcase.
Once I got glasses, I regained the ability to do schoolwork, and this was my one “in” with my grandmother. If I performed well in school, my home life was okay. My grandmother could brag about my report cards as a reflection on her parenting skills. When we drew or colored in school, I chose my grandmother’s favorite colors. She liked magenta. I went so far as getting my hair cut to match my grandmother’s hair, in hopes that flattery would make her like me. In around first grade I was busted trying to smuggle a biscuit out of the cafeteria. The biscuit was delicious and I wanted to take it home to share with my grandmother.
In fourth grade the school tested us to see which students were considered academically gifted. I must have just barely missed the cutoff so my grandmother requested/insisted that I take the test a second time. I doubt I got any smarter in the interim, but I was able to get into the AG class that met in a trailer on Friday mornings. Unfortunately, this meant I was missing regular instruction time, and worse, had extra homework. I was almost always unable to do the AG worksheets because all I had was a twenty year old incomplete set of Encyclopedias. Feeling like a failure because I couldn’t finish this homework, I often cried in frustration.
Tears and other expressions of emotions were frowned upon, at best, and were punishable offenses, at worst. When my grandmother told me my mother and her third husband, Eddie were getting a divorce, I started to cry. Rather than comfort me or have any desire to find out why I was upset, she chastised me for it. If I expressed anger, that meant being yelled at and hearing my grandmother’s list of everything she thought was wrong with me. If I laughed too loudly, she didn’t like it and told me that it was wrong to be the person laughing the loudest. I remember one of my grandmother’s teacher friends comparing my laugh to that of a hyena — maybe my laugh was actually that bad.
My mother and my grandmother were very focused on my appearance, mostly because it reflected on them. I always had bad teeth and because they were both self-conscious about their teeth, my teeth were a problem to be solved. My mother had perfect teeth and my grandmother only had five or six of her bottom front teeth. I can understand my grandmother not wanting me to share her lack of teeth because it affected her life so much. She had dentures, but was embarrassed to wear them. Because she had so few teeth, it greatly impacted her diet. She couldn’t eat crunchy foods or those that required much chewing, such as salads or some meats. She not only wanted me to take care of my teeth, but she also wanted them to be straight like my mother’s. They started taking me to the dentist who cemented my first dental appliance when I was in 3rd grade. After that, I couldn’t have sticky foods or chewing gum, so when the teacher gave us gum on Fridays, I was the one kid who wasn’t allowed to have any. In 5th grade, my mother took me to get braces. I was so excited, thinking this meant I was grown up and because I was getting to spend a little time with my mother. What I wasn’t expecting was the amount of pain I’d be in. I was spending the night with her and Eddie and we went to one of those cafeteria-style restaurants with his parents. I was able to choose some soft foods for myself, at least, and I tried to conceal my pain. My grandmother took me each month to have my braces tightened and if memory serves, my mother paid for these orthodontist visits. When I had my braces removed two years later, in 7th grade, I admit that I wasn’t the best at wearing my retainer. To be more precise, I was really bad about wearing it to bed and removing it in my sleep. Eventually, I gave up and my teeth shifted pretty badly.
When I was 11 or 12, and trying to emulate my mother’s appearance — I was wearing her hand-me-down clothes, the same shoes, and the same hairstyle that she had. I was even listening to her music, specifically a Rod Stewart tape, in an attempt to feel close to my mother. Because I had the same hairstyle, I was just beginning to do my hair on my own, including using hairspray. The hairspray clogged my pores on my forehead and I had a breakout on my giant forehead, like a billboard, for most of 6th grade. My grandmother was not secretive about how embarrassed this made her, having to take me out in public looking like that.
There is one positive to having been an outcast though. I think it makes me unafraid to care what others think about me. I have no problem being the one person who wears a mask for Covid. I don’t mind eating or shopping alone. I don’t care all that much about doing hair and makeup or keeping up with trends. I wear whatever I want, even if it’s not in fashion. I’m not saying having your kid be an outcast is a kind way to raise a child, but I have tried to make lemonade from the lemons.
