Bombardment

I went to a private school in grades 1-8. (Lest you immediately get the idea that it was a hoity toity place, let me be clear that if anything, the school was out of date, backward, and cheap in many, if not most respects. Said attributes may or may not be relevant to this story.)

We had regular gym class but I’d be hard-pressed to tell you what sort of qualifications any of the adult instructors over the years had. Two frequent teachers were school mothers. Were they paid? Volunteers? Educated in physical fitness? Possessed by demons? I don’t know.

The boys & girls were routinely thrown together for activities all the way through eighth grade. This meant that 12, 13, and 14 year old boys were pitted against the same-age girls. One “game” where the genders were routinely mixed was Bombardment, a moniker which is both funny and more than a little twisted.

Bombardment was a little different from the more mainstream dodgeball (which was played in a circle outdoors). Using the school’s auditorium/gym as the venue, the players were divided into two teams. A line on the floor down the middle of the space separated teams during play. If a player stepped over the line, he or she was eliminated from the game ( “out”) and had to sit down on the sidelines.

Three – I think – hard, red rubber balls, about the size of basketballs or perhaps a shade smaller, were used. The object was to hit a player on the other side with a ball. That was the whole game. Hit a player on the other side – anywhere on their body – and they were eliminated. If, however, someone on the other team caught the ball, the person who threw it was out. The win was determined by eliminating everybody on the opposite team. All the balls were in play at the same time. The environment was mayhem.

It was not all all unusual for the teachers to make the game boys-vs-girls so this meant various boys could put all their aggression, hostility, sexual frustration, and what have you, into throwing those balls hard enough to knock some hapless girl nearly off her feet. Head shots were fine. Hitting a kid’s eye glasses was fine. Are we having fun now?!😕

Many of us girls, ill-suited to aggressive play and generally coached to be nice, helpful, kind, unassuming, meek – I could go on – sucked at this game. (Several of the boys, I should say, shared these traits. They were typically disdained by other boys, at least the more aggressive ones.) Our goal was primarily not to get hurt. Some people didn’t try at all, more or less allowing themselves to get hit by a ball, either by standing still like the proverbial deer or by not moving around very fast to “dodge” the ball. I guess their plan, if they had one, was to get eliminated quickly, i.e., take the pain up front & spend the remainder of class sitting on the sidelines.

The folks eliminated and relegated to the sidelines did not sit quietly. Oh no, they hurled “encouragement” and insults at their teammates. Why they cared who won I don’t really know.

I was not aggressive, didn’t have ball-throwing skills least of all in a desire to smack someone with one, but I had one asset: I was fast. That was my entire play. Run, run, run. Evade, evade, evade. I stuck close to the back wall and kept moving. Skinny & speedy, I was not an easy target. Which is not to say other kids didn’t try to hit me, they did. But the slow, the fat, and the weak were the first, easy targets (just like in the wild!😮).

Sadly, my tactic was only good so far. After many of my teammates were picked off in a given game, the rest of us became the targets. And with less people in play, you were more likely to get hit by a ball. I hated getting hit by a ball. It hurt! Plus, with most of your team gone – and now sitting on the sidelines screaming  – all the balls were being thrown at you and whoever remained, simultaneously. When they missed, the balls frequently rebounded off the metal grates covering the auditorium’s large windows. I can still hear the sound of the balls slamming into those grates. The ferocity in which the balls blasted into them was the SAME ferocity in which they hit YOU when they made contact.😢

It must have happened more than once, but due my successful running, bobbing, and weaving, I remember being the last player left in a game. Did I ever catch the ball out of sheer dumb luck? I vaguely think I did. But I know I got hit far more often.😐

Short Thought #257 (marriage)

My mother blamed her children for her lousy marriage, since according to her, we were what she and my father argued about, and but for us they wouldn’t have a problem.

My parents dated, got married, and immediately began having children. Lots of children. If my mother’s words had any traction, you’d expect that once their children were all grown and gone, my parents could resume or begin that supposed good rapport. I don’t think I need to tell you no such thing happened.

Harmless fun on the job

A long time ago I had a temp job through an employment agency working at a very well-known food company updating their mailing list. This mainly consisted of inputting address changes and new requests into a database to be sent free recipe cards. I’d always been a very responsible goody two-shoes who tried to do everything right on all my jobs, temp or otherwise, but this time I decided to have a bit of fun. In addition to making all the necessary corrections and updates, I also added to the database several names of pets belonging to people I knew. All I did was take the pet’s first name and tack on the last name of the person; hence “Chessie Gibbs”, a cat of my acquaintance, began receiving free recipe cards in the mail. Years later a friend of mine told me her dog was still getting recipe cards. Clearly the company had yet to notice my handiwork.😁

Inherited grief

I grew up in a big family. A big family that cast a long shadow. Years ago extended family or family friends would sometimes say my parents had “two families.” This phrase didn’t mean what it does now, referring to when a man dumps/leaves his first wife & kids and goes on to have a second batch, usually with a younger woman. In the old days it meant when there was a noticeable gap in the offspring, a span of years when no child was born, as if the parents took a little break from procreating and then started up again.

What people had either forgotten or never knew was that there was a child inbetween the “two families”, a baby that before age one got sick and died. A baby that had a name, several older siblings, a funeral, and a grave. I didn’t know the baby. I came later. The child, who would have been my sibling, just like my many others, was vague and fuzzy. I was told the skimpiest of information. It was a closed subject and I didn’t understand it. I’d be an adult before I could shake a bit of real information out of anyone in the family.

Death and grief were handled weirdly in my family. I’m certain we don’t own the market on that. Things were not discussed. Grief was not expressed. Drama, rage, anger, theatrics – these were all okay. But grief? Sadness? No.

See, what I have pieced together goes beyond this lost child. In the year prior to the baby’s death, a first cousin, the same age as one of my siblings, and a beloved young uncle died, as well as a grandfather. I knew something about these people but even more vaguely than our baby. As a child and even later I wasn’t even clear on who they were or that they – just names – were related to me. Now I can appreciate that they were all people my older siblings knew and loved. Within a year my older siblings, all under twelve years old, lost a first cousin, an uncle, a grandfather, and a younger sibling.

Instead of dealing with any of this or helping the children, it was business as usual in the household. I wasn’t there but I feel certain of it. I’ve gleaned enough information and have simply experienced enough of my family’s ways firsthand to know. Yes, sure, my parents no doubt had their own pain and were almost likely “handling” death as they had been taught long before, but I still fault them. They could have – should have – done better. I think they were too caught up in themselves to offer their children what was needed. My parents were grown; they had resources if they wanted them. What resources did little kids have? Only each other I expect. To whatever degree.

I am convinced my older brothers and sisters were permanently marked by these deaths, made worse by how they were handled. I think they, with no proper guidance or sufficient comfort from our parents, “stuffed” and repressed their grief and pain and consequently paid for it throughout their lives. I’ll grant you, it’s said not everybody deals with death & grief the same, there’s no “right” way, etcetera – I’ve heard all that – BUT if you either don’t deal with it or do unhealthy things as a result, well that ain’t handling it, Sally.

Figuring this mess out has helped me. These are insights I wouldn’t expect other family members to enjoy, appreciate, or welcome.😕 As a rule my insights or attempts to make sense of my family of origin are best kept to myself or occasionally shared with one other member. It helps me though, to understand. If I understand what went down in my family in the many years before I was born I can understand my own life better.

The “second” family – the kids born after the baby died, including me – didn’t have a grief stew in their early lives. The deaths that we experienced were not like the ones our older brothers & sisters knew. Oh, death was still handled weirdly, but there weren’t so many, so close to home. I think I can say, despite whatever else we had to deal with by being members of this particular family, repressed grief wasn’t among them. By the time a very significant death came again to our family, I was old enough to handle it as I saw fit, to actually deal with it, and to try to learn something. The family, on whole, tried to stick with the old, traditional methods of NOT dealing with it, but as soon as that was dead clear to me so to speak, I was having none of it. Grief needed to be handled and experienced, I knew this intuitively and actively sought out ways of doing so.

I think my older siblings were saddled very young with scary things beyond their control, and what is scarier or more beyond control than death? They adopted my parents’ methods of stuffing away grief. But grief never stays put; it finds its way out – for better and not better at all – and can haunt people for a lifetime.

Short Thought 239

I should have run after the first time we played tennis and he had a tantrum when I won. But the thing is – and I still feel this clearly so many years later – in the initial seconds I watched his display on the opposite side of the net (but directed at me)  I thought he was joking. I didn’t believe he was genuinely acting that way after our fun-spirited game. But he meant it.  He was giving me a preview to his character and in time I’d pay for both not comprehending that and not possessing the gumption/forethought/sense to act on it.