Memoirs of a Little Boy

My stepmother was a troubled soul, and I was the source of all her troubles. I know because that’s what her psychologist said. He wrote it down in a report that he sent to her; and when I was eleven I found it and read it, so it must have been true?

It started very early, so early that my feet didn’t touch the floor when I sat on a chair by the kitchen table. I wouldn’t eat my oatmeal! I didn’t eat it at breakfast and I sat there until lunch. I wouldn’t eat it at lunch; and I wouldn’t eat it at supper either. Looking back on it, by lunchtime it was cold and disgusting, and even more so by suppertime.

On top of that her birthday was on August 12^th, at the very beginning of ragweed season, and she let me know that I was allergic to ragweed just to spite her, which was both quite willful and clever of me, now that I come to think of it.

Ragweed season was not only coordinated with my stepmother’s birthday, it also coincided with the beginning of school, and my step mother hauled me off to the family doctor who prescribed massive doses of Benadryl that kept me dopey until first frost. The result was that my report cards were famous for such laudatory plaints as “Robin doesn’t live up to his potential,” and “Robin spends all his time staring out the window.” That was true, and my nose was red and constantly dribbled and I always was wiping my nose with a handful of wet crumbly Kleenex, and I was a thoroughly disgusting little boy who did this all quite deliberately to spite her.

There was no way that my stepmother could fix me, or make me do what she had determined that she wanted done. I must have made her feel very helpless and angry.

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Now as an adult I have a number of observations about this, but I’ve told the story straight up. There is always a “back story” behind stories like this. From what I remember the psychologist didn’t deal with her out relationships with her own brutal mother, or with her feelings about her relationship with my father, and where I fit into that, or didn’t, in her mind. And just for the record I forgave her a long time ago, but I thought this would be worth passing on for other parents and teachers.