"T": Three Views of One Incident

     This is a series of three views of one event in my childhood, the first draft of which was written in 2009, when I was attending BMCC.  The assignment, in Shaindel Beers' WR 242 class, inspired me to write the same story in first, second, and third person.  I found this intriguing, and it was the first time I ever wrote anything in second person.  I did not like writing that viewpoint, because it felt like I was telling the reader what they had to do, so I have not done second person stories since.  I discovered that I immensely enjoyed writing from the viewpoint of an animal, though, specifically a dog.  The dog's joy filled me, the minute I slipped into its skin to look at the world.
     This event, which happened around my 7th year of age, was monumental for me at that time.  It was the first time I remember actually seeing something, the way it looked from someone else's eyes.  It was a powerful moment in my development, because it cemented in me what my father had been trying to burn into my brain the first years of my life:  no one was going to believe anything I might say, even though what I wanted to say was the truth.  The frustration of knowing nobody was going to believe the truth was horrible for me.  Years later, when I watched the movie "Nineteen Eighty-Four," the "2+2=5" scene (See video link at the end of this post) made me feel the exact frustration I felt back when I was seven, while this event occurred. 
     This incident also began my deep, lifelong yearning to have a chance to explain to someone else how wrong their perception of my behavior truly was.  If I had physically been able to escape my father's presence at that moment when I was seven, and had the wherewithal and verbal capability to go down and explain to my neighbors what had actually occurred, I do believe their perception of me, and of my father, might have changed.  This desire to explain myself has followed me doggedly since that day, and is finally manifesting itself in this blog, and in all of the writing I am now making public.  My need to explain myself is, in my opinion, a basic human need that drives so much of what humanity inhumanely does to itself.  I wish society would not discourage the desire people have to explain themselves.  I allowed myself to believe there was something wrong with me because I felt this need, but there is nothing wrong with feeling this way.  Now, that I am finally explaining the reasons for things I have done, reasons that have been so mislabeled and misunderstood by others, I feel a great sense of relief.  Sure, there are folks who will still choose to disbelieve or discredit me, but that is not my issue.  If they must see me as a bad person, that is their problem, not mine.  Those who do decide to listen to my words, and try to see my life from my viewpoint, those people are the folks I appreciate, and whom I want to have in my daily existence.  They are the ones I want to reciprocate for, and will listen to when they take the time to explain their viewpoint to me.  When humans are allowed to explain themselves, it gives them a chance to see who loves them enough to listen, who cares about them enough to change a misperception once they have more information. 
     One caveat:  The disparaging comments I make in this story regarding the vegan diet are the viewpoints of a hungry child, and are not how I feel about the vegans I know now.



                                                            THREE VIEWS


                                                                 HUNGRY
     I got in trouble for throwing rocks at a dog. I was seven years-old, and we were living in some apartments in Hillsboro, Oregon.  A man lived in a house across the driveway from our complex. He had a fence around his yard, tall, with snug-fitting slats of wood.  Inside that fence, he kept a dog. It was a Basenji, which is a dog that does not bark like most dogs.  Instead, a Basenji howls and yelps and makes other weird noises. They are very athletic dogs, and enjoy jumping and running around. I knew it was a Basenji, because I heard my mom call it one.  But I did not know about Basenji behavior. When it yelped, I thought it was hungry. When it jumped up high, I thought it wanted out to get food.  This was because I was hungry, and I wanted out to get food.
     My father would not let me eat. My mother fed me, which is how I remained upright, but she worked many hours a week as a registered O. R. nurse who was on-call a lot, so my father watched me often.  He would not feed me. He would eat, staring at me while he did so, but I could not eat.  I could not ask for food or he would make me sorry. If he caught me sneaking food, he made me sorry.
     When my mother was home, we did not have any meat or sugar, or anything that tasted good to me.  My parents were strict Adventists, and worse, they were into a totally fat-free, vegan diet at that time.  I spent my days dizzy, my nights in horrible stomach pain, hearing the blood whoosh in my ears.  My hands often shook, and my father laughed at me because I had dark circles under my eyes.
     My father never let me leave our apartment when my mom was gone, but I could go into the small garage attached to our place. On a shelf in the garage, against the wall, in a plastic bucket, was the food for our cat. I couldn't eat a lot of it, because if my dad thought the cat was eating too much food, he might get rid of it, and I loved that cat. I had to be real careful not to get caught eating that food.  My dad was sneaky.  He loved to catch me doing something bad, like eating, and then he would smile before making me sorry. One time, I was so startled when he caught me sneaking something from the fridge door late one night, I threw up the food, which I had been shoving into my mouth, all over the floor.  My father was very mad. I never did that again.
     Whenever I went into the garage, I would sneak a handful of cat food, squat in the far corner so I could see the door to the kitchen, the door to the back alley, and the big door for the car, and I would eat the cat food, one piece at a time.  If my father came in, I dropped the food behind me into an old coffee can full of nuts and bolts.
     When I heard that Basenji yelping, I just knew its stomach must hurt like mine did. One day, while I was nibbling on cat food, I decided to share with the hungry dog.  I put the rest of the handful of cat food into my pocket, and waited until my mom came home and my father left for work.  I went outside, and slowly crossed the driveway. I got close to the fence, and the dog started yelping. There were no holes in the fence to push the food through. The wood went all the way to the ground, so I couldn't put it underneath, either. I stepped back, and threw a piece of cat food as high as I could. It went over the fence. The dog went silent, and I could hear him crunching. Then he jumped against the fence and yelped, so I threw another piece. This continued until my pocket was empty. I told the dog I would come back with more food soon.  And I did. For the next few days, I fed the hungry dog.

     One afternoon, my father came in the front door and glared at me. He yelled for my mother.  She came. He said the nice couple down the complex had asked him in to tell him something.  The man had seen me doing something bad. He had seen me throwing rocks at the neighbor's dog.  This nice couple was very disappointed in me, and never wanted me around their place again. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell the truth, and suddenly, in my mind, I saw what my neighbor had seen:  a girl throwing rocks at a dog.  Nobody would believe me if I spoke up.  And if my father did decide to believe me, he would realize I was getting into the cat food, and he would get rid of the cat.  I shut my mouth.
     My father tried to make me sorry for throwing rocks.  But I was never sorry I fed that dog.

                                                                TROUBLED

     You are happy when the new family moves in and you find out they are churchgoing folks, with a well-behaved little girl. They do not throw wild parties or play the TV too loud. In fact, the one time your wife visits them, to drop off some homemade banana bread, she doesn't see a TV at all.
     One day, around Halloween, you notice the little girl and her mother walking to the mailbox, and you tell the little girl to be sure and come by your place to trick-or-treat. She has a kind of dull look about her, and does not seem to understand your words. Her mother thanks you, then says that they do not celebrate Halloween or eat sweets.  "Oh," you say, and watch the little girl's face as it dawns on her that a chance for candy has just slipped by.  So you offer to give her some carrot sticks or an apple, instead of candy. The mother says "Thank you," and nudges the little girl, who thanks you, too.  Early Halloween afternoon, the father brings the daughter down to your place, and lets her have one carrot stick. He tells her to go home, and she does. He stays and talks for awhile, and seems like a friendly, charming man. You and your wife tell him to stop by anytime.
     After a few weeks, you start to notice some strange things about the little girl. She appears to be anti-social, never playing with other kids. She is always acting like she is hiding something, sneaking behind walls, crouching behind garbage cans, jumping like she has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar when you approach her. You can't prove anything, but you know that she is up to no good.
     Then one day, you look out the front window, and you see her throwing rocks over the fence at the neighbor's dog.  You know right then that she is going to be trouble.  Animal cruelty is a danger signal.  When you tell her father, he nods, and says he is sorry.  He tells you that his daughter lies and steals, and now this.  He asks if you will let him know if you ever see her doing anything else, and you say yes, of course, that's what neighbors are for.  He promises to keep her out of your hair.  As you watch him go, you worry about the baby your wife recently found out she will be having.  If a decent, churchgoing man like that has such a troubled child, it can happen to anyone.


                                                                     GAME
     The small female human is back!  He can sense her outside the fence.  Soon, little bits of yummy food will drop down.  He wiggles in anticipation, then leaps against the fence.  He hears a piece of food drop, sniffs it out, and scarfs it down.  Another one falls, and he dashes over to eat it.  The little nibblets taste like the food his adult male human gives to the furry female feline who lives with them.  His human won't let him have anything but the food in his dish when he is in the house, but out here, the presence of this small human makes furry feline food fall from the sky!  She is leaving, now, but hopefully she will come back and make it rain yummy bits again.

Orwell 1984: 2+2=4
Inch Worm: Two and Two are Four.