Every New Torture

by Richard S
(Texas, USA)

I am sixty years old now, and every day of my life I think about my non-childhood. My mother apparently felt it was her job to, and I don't say the term lightly, Beat Me. Every new torture she heard of was tried on me. I remember I spent more times on my knees than I can forget. This, I soon became accustomed to, soon being when I could do it without leaning to take the pressure off first one knee then the other. When my tears started to stop from the pain and humiliation of kneeling with my nose in the corner of the same room they played cards and drank in. Just when I did get to tolerate the pain in my knees she added a twist. Every time she ordered me to a corner, it already had rice all over the ground and I had to kneel in it in just my underwear. Well this was a new pain, one that I should have been able to cry about. I just could not do it, though. This was such a new painful dilemma I could not think of a way to lessen the pain. Placing all my weight on one knee just made it worse and dancing from knee to knee no better. The best I could do was lean my face hard into the corner to try and take the weight off the knees. You may be wondering what in heavens I was doing with my arms and hands, that was never an issue. With my fingers interwoven together they stayed on top of my head, literally. I still sit with my hands on my head unconsciously.

When I turned six, she decided that the kneeling punishment was not enough. That's when she went to the slapping. What fun she had with that. She would hold onto one hand and start slapping for no reason I could remember. I ran in circles and she would get madder and madder, turning with me, her hand never stopped hitting me. This went on until she was tired, then she'd send me to kneel in the corner on the rice. By about the time I was in fourth or fifth grade is when she started with the belt, always my belt. She would tell me to take it off and hand it to her, the next command lay on your bed. I would lay on the bed on my stomach and she would begin to whack me with the belt. She went kind of crazy with the belt and would hit me until she was tired. I had no say and I did cry at first. Finally, I began to get used to that pain and I swear she could tell, then my back became a testing ground for belt buckles, hangers, and my personal favorite, the barbeques flat steel spatula.

Finally, when I was in the seventh grade, I was fixing to shower after gym and the Coach came up to me and asked me what happened to my back. I just told him I slipped in the bathtub. I guess that was a good enough answer, because nothing ever became of it.

Finally after being beat, tossed outside and locked out with only my underwear on so my little brother and all his friends could make fun of me, never having had a birthday cake or party, Christmas a pack of underwear and a pack of socks never a toy, No one ever coming to classroom open houses even though I made stuff to see, Halloweens me and my brother trying to make costumes out of nothing, a tooth fairy that never existed, my brother and I did get an Easter basket once and were told that would be the only one we would ever get so hold on to it so as the years past we could boil our own eggs and put whatever candy we could buy in them.

I think what finally broke me is when I was in Jr High and everyone was getting excited about going to college. I will never forget that day. I went home, and both my mom and dad were there, and I asked them both about seeing what I could do to go to college. My dad looked me straight in the eye and said, "There is no way in hell you are going to college." I lost it completely. A calm came over me and I beat him until he could stand no longer, then beat my mom until she screamed for me to stop. The next day I was sent to Louisiana to live with my grandparents. I think that was good for me.

What happened to me? Well, I will tell you.

I came back to Houston after I graduated and started work as a steel fitter's helper. Within a few years I was made a first-class structural steel fitter, making amazing money in the 70s. I got tired of that and joined the Air Force. There I learned electronics and became a Missile Systems Analyst. After the Air Force, I became Manager of a membership yacht store, when they asked me to take over the Florida store to increase that store's income also, I quit.

I then worked for a small computer programming company with 50 employees, quit 20 years later because I got tired of the travel. By then, I was a Computer Systems Analyst making large money and helped the company grow to about 500 employees, office's all over the US, which I had to visit. I got tired of it and quit. Then a store manager for Walmart for about 15 years got tired of that so now I am retired.

I wonder what would have happened if I went to college, and had a normal childhood. I suppose I would have had a better life.