I stole some pears from my neighbors tree, but I also remember being a really evil baby.
Does Milton have a coherent view of responsibility and Divine foreknowledge? Discuss.
I remember lying about having taken my vitamins. I was completely transparent (at perhaps 10yo), and to this day I've never been much for deception.
I was a mouthy, light-fingered little son of a bitch, but memories of specific punishments are hard to distinguish.
Oudemia as a baby was capable of making only two sorts of noises, both of them nasty.
The first was a choked gurgling reminiscent of faulty drains. She made this noise when she had succeeded in doing something particularly atrocious.
The second was a thin shriek suggestive of fingernails on blackboards. She made this noise when she had been prevented from doing something particularly atrocious.
I don't recall this story but I'll share it anyway. I must have been 3 or so. My parents had just moved to Memphis, Texas, population 2,500, and they were having the local Baptist minister over for coffee. I was playing in another room with some blocks and I couldn't line them up just so, leading me to scream GODDAMNIT at the top of my lungs. No lie, in the awkward silence that ensued, the dog mounted the minister's leg.
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
8: And that little dog turned out to be... Lassie!
I liked my mom a lot, though. And Neoplatonism.
My parents were socializing with friends, and my brother and I were supposed to stay out of the way. I was possibly four, my brother two. My brother gets a hold of an open can of baby powder, and starts throwing it in the air all around the bedroom. I go out to try and get my mom's attention, but I am sent away before I can tell. Later on my father sees the mess, and spanks my brother for doing it, and also me, for not telling. I still remember the sense of injustice I felt. That's the only time I remember being spanked.
My grandmother likes to tell the story of how I threw a tantrum in the bank when denied a piece of candy from the machine. She spanked me then, too, in public. I must have been around two, but I don't remember it.
1: Plagiarized from Saint Augustine. Oudemia flunks.
The iconic story in my family was me and my mom shopping for a toy for some other child's b-day, age 3 or so. I requested a toy of my own, was rebuffed, and, clearly aping what I had seen other children do, carefully got onto my hands and knees to perform a temper tantrum.
My mom, of course, yanked me to my feet, smacked my bottom, and told me that, if I ever tried that again, I'd never get another toy. It worked.
The only thing I remember is when I had been told that my grandparents just got new screens on the porch, and if I was going to play with a ball, I shouldn't let it get out of control, because if it damaged one of the screens I was in trouble. So after playing with the ball for about one minute I kicked it way up in the air and it bounced and went through one of the screens. I didn't understand why they thought I had been defying the rules, because presumably if the screen was going to be damaged by any contact at all with the ball, even indirect and inadvertent, they shouldn't have let me play with that ball to begin with. I mean, I can't control all the caroms!
Around two. Drew on the wall and got spanked.
Oh, but this was earlier. Never mind 16 because I didn't really get in trouble and I hadn't really been bad. The example I should use was when I threw my cousin down the stairs when we were both 4. I don't remember it, although I do remember an incident from the same week when he had been using my rocking chair to scrape paint off the wall. Anyway, the reason I gave for throwing him down the stairs was "His mother was calling him, and he wasn't listening."
We had a huge birch tree (with the white, paper-like bark) in our front yard. My sister and I (at about 5 YO) decided it would be teh awesome to collect as much of the white bark that we could. We ended up stripping the tree of as much of the bark as we could, as high up we could. Which meant that the tree, from the ground up to about 4 or 5 feet off of the ground, was stripped pretty severely. (That part of the tree was a deep brown while the rest of the tree was lily white.) When my father came out and discovered what we had done, we both got the spanking (and lecture) of a life time. How were *we* supposed to know it could have killed the tree?!
My own memories of this are vague, but one of my earliest disobediences became family legend: one day, after being told that I couldn't go swimming without an adult, I sneaked out to the pool and jumped in the deep end. According to my parents, it was only good luck that my dad--alerted by the noise, maybe--found me and fished me out before I drowned.
19: I remember being told not to mess with birch bark at my aunt's house in Lake Placid. That stuff is fucking irresistible to little kids. It's so peely!
I preferred sycamore bark. It didn't fall apart once you got it off the tree. You could carry around a sheet of it for days.
I, at just about three, climbed up a ladder onto the roof of our trailer to get my stocking-cap (which my older sister had thrown onto the roof).
At birth. Original sin, for which I was punished by being born into a fallen world, a world I never chose.
Is the moment of first disobedience the first time you get in trouble and are punished, or the first time you do something wrong and are cognizant of the action as wrong? (I went to a bad high school and a second-class university and haven't read the Milton.)
When I was in kindergarten they made us do a weird little parade on Halloween, marching through a few other classrooms in our costumes. As we marched between two rows of desks, someone knocked the candy, pencils, and trinkets from another kid's desktop onto the floor. I reached down and picked up a tiny address book on a keychain -- little sheets of paper held by a single brad between metal "book" covers -- and put it in my pocket.
When the parade was over, I started to think about how casually I had stolen the trinket from this other kid. I wished I could give it back, but I had no idea whose it was. Also, it already held a few phone numbers scrawled in pencil, but at age five I didn't have much of a Rolodex that I needed to carry around on a keychain. I ended up ditching the stolen goods in a vacant lot -- burying them, I think. And I knew I was not a good person at all.
24: You've left a toujours déjà out of that, I think.
Is the moment of first disobedience the first time you get in trouble and are punished, or the first time you do something wrong and are cognizant of the action as wrong? (I went to a bad high school and a second-class university and haven't read the Milton.)
I haven't read Milton either. I think both questions are interesting.
22: Oh, you peel it far enough down (as far as we did) and birch bark is pretty damned durable, too. We had peeled off some of the outer really flakey white bark at other times and hadn't got in trouble. But then we had discovered that you could peel off huge swaths of it by peeling off the entire layer of outer bark (probably 1 mm thick). This basically left the trunk completely exposed. Looking back on it, I can sympathize with my dad. That tree was in the middle of our yard and it STILL hasn't grown back white bark on the part that we had stripped. I think we were pretty lucky it didn't die.
26: 'twas ever thus.
My father is an astronomer -- when I was four or five, on a Sunday morning before church, I climbed onto the chair in his study and found one of those old (glass) photographic plates on his desk. It was a picture of the stars, taken with the camera attached to the telescope he used to do his research. Next to it was a hammer. For no good reason, I picked up the hammer and smashed the plate. He found out later and, angry, he asked me if I had done it -- and I lied, and said, "no." But of course it was me and I was punished, the first time I remember being punished for anything.
the first time you do something wrong and are cognizant of the action as wrong?
Interesting: apparently at around age 2 or 3, I took to making and eating mudpies. My mother disciplined me by ferociously scrubbing my hands each time I did it. I then took to what my mom describes as compulsive hand-washing, and she eventually put me on ritalin for a short while. Which worked. I don't remember any of this: it's just sort of a curiosity.
a huge birch tree (with the white, paper-like bark)
Paper Birch.
FYI.
i don't remember the first one, but it happens like daily
for example, last sunday i've been to port authority and there was a chinese man who seemed totally lost, at first he asked me whether i'm a chinese and i said no, and thought it's all he wanted to know, may be someone from Falung Gong something
but he asked about the bus going to the town he wanted to go, i should have gone with him to the ticket's booth and help him somehow and i did not
my bus was there with people already loading in
i felt bad and still feel bad when i think about it
like what's good trying to be good and when there comes the moment of an actual need to do something do not do anything
Ben still recalls that he dangled a participle once. Once.
30: Leaving a hammer next to a glass plate? Your father was asking for it. He probably punished you because he didn't get the chance to do it himself.
I was tagging along behind my sister and my cousin, and they were trying to leave me being. The crawled up a pile of scrap metal onto the roof of the woodshop. I pleaded with them to come down, and when they didn't, I summoned all my courage and followed them up. Whereupon my father appeared and caught us all. He brought us all inside and spanked us all. I was the last to get spanked, so I had the dread of anticipation. I felt I had a pretty good case in my defense, that I was merely following the others. He laughed and told me that I would now be following them onto his knee for a spanking.
Whenever I read the parenting books that advise against spanking because children perceive it as unfair and humiliating, I think of that episode.
In second grade I used to kiss the girls, run away and make them cry. Once I punched another boy in the stomach, knowing he was vulnerable there tho not knowing why. He had had an appendectomy, and my punch tore the stitches loose, causing an infection and eventual death.
Some of the above is untrue. I must return to the extended essay on the career of Katie Couric.
"trying to leave me being" s/b "trying to leave me behind"
McManus killed Houdini! Somebody tell Ricky Jay!
All of my true disobediences were things I was never caught for, which leaves me with a lifelong sense that justice will catch up to me one day, or is doing so merely through infusing my everyday life with a whiff of doom.
Mostly I was punished for things like "Not having a meaningful relationship with my grandfather" and abstract stuff like that.
Mostly I was punished for things like "Not having a meaningful relationship with my grandfather" and abstract stuff like that.
That's eight different kinds of fucked up.
Mostly I was punished for things like "Not having a meaningful relationship with my grandfather" and abstract stuff like that.
My mother inflicted a great deal of abuse on us for failing where she had failed, too.
Relationships are always bad, especially with grandfathers.
Not having a meaningful relationship with my grandfather
So was that more of a sit-in-a-corner thing, or did you actually get spanked?
You *SMACK*
Will *SMACK*
Listen *SMACK*
With interest *SMACK*
To Gramps's *SMACK*
Stories! *SMACK*
I could see where an essay on the topic could actually be productive. "Why Gramps Smells Funny."
Luckily for me, both of my grandfathers were dead by the time I was aware of who they had been.
That I remember punishments but not the infractions that brought them on strongly suggests that my first impressions from early childhood were entirely correct: I didn't do anything wrong, and this is totally unfair.
As far as the rest is concerned, I'm content not to fish around in the muck of guilt, shame and self-loathing that is to my psyche as cerebrospinal fluid is to my brain.
In other child news, today Siobhán (who as you will remember is 4) announced that "Good is another kind of beautiful." So great, my little daughter.
Sound sort of like a stoner, Jesus.
Did you happen to commit the sin against the Holy Spirit? That's a big one, worthy of lifelong guilt.
You mean masturbation? Christ, man, I'm not a pervert.
I remember, as a scientific test, wanting to find out if the kitchen scissors could cut through my dad's shorts. While he was wearing them.
I don't remember the punishment, although it was pointed out to me that this was a really stupid thing to do, and was bad for the shorts.
No dad was injured in this experiment.
Categories:
(1) Despair, (2) Presumption of God's mercy, (3) Impugning the known truth,
(4) Envy the spiritual good of another, (5) Obstinacy in sin, and (6) Final impenitence.
No masturbation.
Okay, the Holy Spirit's got me on (1), but I won't cop to any of the others. Maybe (3), but only in the most cheap and venal ways, and for (5), it's more laziness than obstinacy. (6) remains to be seen.
Mostly I was punished for things like "Not having a meaningful relationship with my grandfather" and abstract stuff like that.
what the fuck, that's bizarre.
You might as well hit the three you missed, dude, because you're fuckin doomed.
not enough or often enough, and its been at the root of most of the problems that have come up in my life since
How is Presumption of God's mercy a sin? Didn't that Jesus dude preach the mercy? Wouldn't it make sense to presume God is merciful?
First of all, md 20/400, you're going to HELL!
Second, "presumption" means the equivalent of saying "Jesus will forgive me; that's what he's for." revolving door honky-tonk revival Christianity, sin today and repent tomorrow.
Wouldn't it make sense to presume God is merciful?
It's the difference between presuming that God is merciful, and presuming upon God's mercy. He's a stickler for that kind of thing.
Your pitiful curses fall to the ground like stricken birds, Jesus, you eternally-damned sinner.
Ah, presumption. We're talking class-based redemption here. Only the worthy sinners, who don't presume, get saved. I'll stick with Finney.
Yes, presumption is a species of pride. The Lord is a loving and forgiving father, but not a stupid one.
61: It's just the answer to 'if God can forgive anyone, can I get on with the raping and the killing and be okay?"
50:I'll cop to everything but 4), and I have to think about 4).
I remember (some) of the bad things I did when I was small, but I do not recall getting caught. I recall getting into trouble quite a few times, but have no recollection of what deed I was being punished for, only the punishments themselves.
I think there's a moral there, but not one I think most parents would enjoy, not even with Dr Suess illustrations and rhymy text.
The first I remember? Lifting baseball cards from a local con artist who, as it stands, knew I did it but dared not report me.
Why afraid? You had the NOLA version of the Kray twins backing you?
Because he was a con artist and I knew he was ripping people off. So instead of reporting me to the police, he followed me home one day and told my parents. They feigned anger while he was there, then congratulated their young Robin Hood.*
*And made him return the hoodwinked cards to their rightful owners. Sigh. That Tom Seaver rookie card could keep me in Ramen for a month now.
My mom, pbuh, threw away my Sandy Koufax rookie card.
I remember, as a scientific test, wanting to find out if the kitchen scissors could cut through my dad's shorts. While he was wearing them.
Oh yeah, I did that too. Except that it was a new shirt of mine. I guess I thought the fabric was different from my other shirts and wondered if it had to be cut at a certain grain or something.
wanting to find out if the kitchen scissors could cut through my dad's shorts. While he was wearing them.
God help me, I can't resist. Another hillbilly joke:
An old mountaineer grabs his son by the arm and says, "Boy, tell me the truth. Did you push the old outhouse over the hill?"
The boy says, "Pa, I cain't tell you no lie. I done it."
Whereupon the father thrashes him mercilessly. The boy stands sobbing and says, "Pa, when George Washington told the truth about cuttin' down that cherry tree, his pa didn't whoop him."
The old mountaineer says, "George Washington's pa wasn't sittin' in that cherry tree, neither."
I don't remember any specific infractions until high school. I was a good kid and mostly got in trouble for having a "smart mouth." I do very specifically recall that when they would make us all go to confession (Catholic school... ) I would make stuff up because I really hadn't done anything memorably bad.
Most notable: I was in third grade, failed a math test, and was so scared to tell my parents that I tried to forge my mom's signature on the bottom of the exam. This went over about as well as one might expect.
The first bad thing I recall: at the age of probably 4?, spending a several weeks or more throwing my breakfast in the garbage every morning when my mom left the room and then claiming I'd eaten it so that I could have dessert. (Yes, I had dessert after breakfast. I had a bad mother.) Eventually she found it one day--lord knows what took her so long--and gave me hell about it.
I actually remember being punished once before that, when my mother worked at a daycare, which I also attended. I think I was three? There was some reason she felt a need to "establish her authority" with the kids there--no idea why--but she decided that the only way to do it effectively was to spank me mercilessly to make an example. I remember wailing at the injustice--"but mom I didn't do anything!!"--and she just said quietly under her breath "I know, I'm not spanking you because you were bad, I'm spanking you so the other kids will respect me..." Let's file that under "concepts that are really hard for a three-year-old to understand"--I was pissed.
The first time I recall being really deeply *aware* of the intrinsic wrongness of some wrong thing I had done was in second grade when I pushed my teacher off her stool and broke her leg.
The first time I recall being really deeply *aware* of the intrinsic wrongness of some wrong thing I had done was in second grade when I pushed my teacher off her stool and broke her leg..... but I also found the experience strangely satisfying, and it went from there.
If I were on a jury for a serial murderer, and he told the story in the second paragraph of 74, I would have to vote "Not Guilty".
The grandfather thing was an ongoing battle. They never spanked me about it, but I was often sent to my room to think about the fact that grandfathers die and wouldn't I be sorry that I didn't want to kiss him when he was alive? We just weren't close. Even when I was a baby, I really despised him. There are home movies of this, unfortunately.
I remember that I taught my brother how to climb out of his crib so we could eat things, but I don't remember being punished for it. I also remember losing at chess to one of my dad's seminary friends when I was four and subsequently slamming a door in fury several times, breaking the mirror on the other side, but I don't remember that punishment either. The punishment I do remember is the kid down the street having all of his toys given away. The other families on the block were too snooty to accept charity, so my brother and I hit the big time.
I remember being sent to my room, and since it was in a house we left when I was about four, I must have been younger than that. I can't remember what for, though. My parents were fairly easy going and the things I remember being punished for were usually things like being rude to them or talking to them in a disrespectful way. I could get away with quite a lot but they really didn't like it if I was rude.
The combination of them being easy going and me being quite well-behaved means I have very few memories of much punishment that went beyond raised voices.
When I was about 4 or 5 I left my colouring pencils on the lounge room floor, so my dad came up to my room and threw them at me, one by one. In my memory they were like knives and impaled me against my bed - it's a miracle that I survived - but probably none hit me at all.
The first great crime of my life occurred when I was 4. I was accompanying my father to the grocery store, and as we were leaving some gaudily colored display in the entrance-way caught my eye and I grabbed one of whatever it was (something to do with barbecues I think). Of course my father noticed before we were about 20 feet from the door, and so I had to turn around, march back into the store, find a manager, haltingly explain what I had done (I'm not sure that I even had a mental category for "theft" at that time) and apologize. I remember the manager being awfully nice about it, and in retrospect it was probably pretty cute, especially since whatever the stolen item was, it was not something designed to appeal to 4 year-olds. What can I say? When I want something, I don't want to pay for it!