I occasionally get these memories that are so vivid, it feels like time collapsed for a second, pushing the past into the present, before it retreats back into the sea of time.
This happened last night, while I was watching The Toys That Made Us, about LEGO, of all things.
I was always a good student when I was a kid. I worked hard to get all As, I did my homework the instant I got home, I participated heavily in classroom discussion, and I never goofed off when it wasn’t recess.
But in fifth grade, something changed. Suddenly, everything was incredibly difficult. I couldn’t focus in class. I didn’t want to do my homework right away when I got home. I still got As, but I had to work harder for them than I ever had to that point.
Except in math. I just did not get fifth grade math AT ALL. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, I couldn’t remember basic things like multiplication tables, and long division may as well have been hieroglyphics.
I’ve been trying my best to remember what was going on at home then, and I have a big blank page where those memories should be. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say there is a dimly lit tableau that I can’t see when I look directly at it. It only gives up shapes and colors, mostly obscured by shadows. I know that, by this time in my life, I had been telling my mother that I didn’t want to go on auditions or be an actor. I remember telling her, almost every day, “I just want to be a kid”, and I remember her dismissing that. She constantly gaslighted me about how I really did want to be an actor. She was so manipulative about it. She would tell me how selfish I was, because she’d sacrificed her own career to support mine. Please note for the record that when I was SEVEN FUCKING YEARS OLD, I did not say, “Mother, please abandon your tremendously successful acting career so that I may have one of my own.” Please also note that, as I got older, my only request, ever, was to please let me be a kid and stop making me work. Until I ended contact with them, they gaslighted me about this whenever I brought it up.
So I can’t remember if anything particularly memorable was happening at home then, something which would have made it hard for me to focus and concentrate when I was in class, but I suspect that I was becoming aware of just how much of a bully my father was to me, and how little my mother seemed to care about it.
In any case, it was fifth grade, and I was struggling like crazy to understand math. I was barely passing my math tests, and when I should have been getting tutoring, or being helped by my parents, my father was busy bullying me, and my mother was forcing me to go into Hollywood three or four days a week for auditions after school, which I hated.
This is where I stop for a moment and I tell you that it’s okay for you to have enjoyed the work I did when I was a kid. It’s unlikely that many of you have seen my work before Stand By Me, because it was mostly in commercials and a few movie of the weeks on television, and one entirely forgettable feature film. I’ve written about how unhappy I was as a child actor, and that’s caused some people to share with me that they feel guilty for enjoying the work I did then. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay, and I’m glad that you did enjoy it. That means it wasn’t a waste of my time, and it means that I was good at being an actor, which I can feel proud of.
Okay, as Joe Bob Briggs says, back to the movie.
While I was watching this thing about LEGO, time collapsed and I was in fifth grade. My teacher Mrs. M., made me stay after school one day to do all this math homework that I hadn’t done, because when normal kids were doing homework, I was sitting in traffic to or from Hollywood. Oh, and as it turns out, in the car is not the place to do schoolwork, especially schoolwork that a kid is struggling to understand.
The way I remember it (and this is an unreliable memory, because I am a writer and sometimes my brain invents things), I didn’t even know I was going to be kept after school until the final bell rang, and she told me to stay in my seat as my classmates got up and got ready to go home. She told me she’d called my home and told whoever she spoke to that I was catastrophically behind in math homework, and she wanted to keep me after school to finish it.
This didn’t feel like a teacher giving me the extra attention I needed to master arithmetic. This felt like I was being punished, which really sucked for me because I was a good kid who worked hard, and who just. Didn’t. Get. It.
If she had worked with me, if she had tutored me, if she had sat with me and refused to give up until I understood the things I was struggling with, she would have been my favorite teacher of all time.
But that’s not what happened.
No, while she sat at her desk and graded papers, I sat at my desk and struggled to get through was was probably a dozen pages of math homework, which feels insurmountable when you’re eleven and can’t seem to understand fundamental arithmetic for some reason.
Any question about the ratio of punishment to meaningful help was answered when she made me drag my desk out of the classroom and onto the terrace in front of it, facing the playground where all the after school daycare kids were playing.
Now, maybe she thought it would be nice for me to work outside, in the late afternoon sun (I know this happened in winter, because the light was golden and the sun was low in the sky by 3:30), and fresh air. But all I felt was humiliated and embarrassed. You know who eleven year-old me knew had to stay after school, sit at their desk, and do class work after everyone else has been released for the day? Fuck ups. Bad kids. Stupid kids.
And it wasn’t just humiliating, either. It was offensive, because it wasn’t even my fault that I was struggling in school so much. It seemed like I was constantly begging my mother to just let me be a kid, to stop making me do this thing I didn’t want to do. I didn’t have to words or maturity to express that the responsibility of learning lines and performing for strangers every day after school was giving me paralyzing anxiety and the early stages of depression, but I’m pretty sure that’s what was happening to me.
Last night, while I was watching this delightfully nerdy dude talk about the LEGO system (if you haven’t seen this documentary series and you’re of a certain age, I can’t recommend it enough), time collapsed for a nanosecond and I was sitting at my desk, in 1981 or 1982, feeling utterly, completely, entirely humiliated, and defeated.
I can see the beautiful, golden sunlight of the late afternoon sun. I can feel the warmth radiating off the walls behind me. I can smell that unmistakable stink of a fifth grade classroom at the end of a warm day, and I can feel in every cell of my body how humiliated and embarrassed and sad and awful I felt at that moment, thirty-nine or so years ago.
I had to pause the show I was watching, grab my journal, and write out as much of this memory as I could, because the alternative was to just cry for that kid, who I want so desperately to go back and protect. I wish I was his dad, because I want to believe that I would have given him the support, the love, the encouragement, and the help he needed to work through something he was clearly struggling with.
And I wouldn’t have bullied him, because I’m not a dick. I’m especially not a dick to my own child. I also wouldn’t have let my spouse bully my child while gaslighting him and forcing him to work when he doesn’t want to, but I’m not my parents. Thank god.
But the world — at least the world I lived in — was profoundly different then. I was in a Lutheran school, with a principal and a fifth grade teacher who never met an authoritarian idea or practice they didn’t fully embrace. It’s no small wonder my father, a relentless and cruel authoritarian, and my mother, who I don’t recall ever sticking up for me, sided with this teacher. I’m sure they all thought that just forcing me to endure humiliating frustration (remember, I didn’t just have a ton of math pages to do; I had a ton of math pages to do that I didn’t understand) would teach me a valuable lesson about the Calvinist ideals of hard work and bootstraps.
I can’t recall how many pages of math I did. I do remember that I didn’t get much help from my teacher, and that it was dark by the time I was picked up to go home. I wish I could remember a single thing about that ride home, but I can’t, and I can’t even talk to the people who could help me remember, because whenever I would ask about things like this, I got gaslighted, or told I was being too dramatic. Hey, at least I didn’t have to go on an audition that day!
It’s unsurprising to me that I haven’t touched on this memory since the early 1980s. It’s painful, it’s upsetting, and it just pain sucks.
But wow did the time streams collapse into a brief singularity of memory last night, putting me right back into that desk, on that afternoon, all those years ago. It hurt then, and it hurts now. But I’m healing as best as I can, doing my best to work through the pain.
Maybe that’s why I got this particular memory as clearly and powerfully and immediately as I did last night. Maybe some part of my brain knows that I’m ready to shine my own light into that tableau so I can remember more clearly.
Maybe I am.
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When I was about this same age (a bit older – perhaps twelve or thirteen), I got a dog. I thought, like so many do, that dogs should just behave. That Molly would love me and follow me around like Lassie because that’s what dogs do. But Molly dragged me down the street on her leash and would run away if she got free from me. I still loved my dog, but I didn’t understand why she was “bad.” And as she slowly got a little better with me, I kept falling for this notion that she could be off leash when I walked in the woods and it would be okay. That she wouldn’t go far and would come back to me when I called. One day, I let her play in the woods and she wouldn’t come back. I couldn’t find her. I sat down at the edge of the woods (near the back sides of some houses), and I started to cry. A total stranger came out of one of the houses and sat down next to me and asked what was wrong. I told them (I do not remember if this person was male or female, but I honestly think it might have been a guy – but I have no idea of their details) and they sat down next to me and gave me a hug, then told me they would help me find my dog. They did. Molly wasn’t that far away. She hadn’t run miles away. She was just being a dog. We put her leash on and the stranger asked me if I would be okay to get home. I said yes and we went our separate ways.
I remember this day as clear as can be (with the caveat that all memories are fallible, of course), because I cried harder when that stranger hugged me, because I had never had a hug when I was crying. Never once in my life that I recall. If I cried at home, I got “shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about.” Crying was bad and was to be punished.
But a total stranger changed everything for me. They recognized I had a problem and they offered first comfort, then help. It was a foreign concept, and as I got older, I realized how much better their way of doing things was. But even then, as a child, I knew it felt nicer (and actually helped more) than what other adults had given me to work with.
If I could go back in time to young Wil in this memory, I would do the same thing that stranger did for me. First, tell him it’s okay. And second, try to figure out how to help. For now, since I can’t do that, I can only offer a virtual hug now and say that I’m proud of your journey, Wil, and I hope you keep growing and healing.
Wil, I don’t know if you’ve read The Overstory by Richard Powers, but there’s a story in that book that sounded so much like yours. It’s a haunting book, and I highly recommend it.
That sounds awful. I’m sorry you had the childhood you had. But I am curious what made you stay in the Hollywood scene. It sounds like you never wanted to be an actor and yet you have continued to audition and try to get acting parts well into adulthood, well beyond the control of your parents. Have you ever actually found yourself or just continued the course your parents set you on? I can’t help but wonder if this is the reason for your insomnia, etc.
So I couldnt sleep the other night and turned the TV on. Stand by Me was just starting. So i didn’t go to sleep for 2 hours. Felt like crap at work the next day but it was worth it!
That’s horrible! I’m so sorry you didn’t get to experience being a kid and I can’t imagine the pressure you were under.
I never was a child actor and I don’t know what it’s like to have such a full schedule at such a young age. But I do know how it feels to be bullied by an overbearing teacher.
During middle school (referred to as “junior high” in those days), Math wasn’t my strong suit either and the teacher, who was a burnout, half crazy, and a year or two away from retirement; never let me forget it. She’d yell at me and ask me, “Are you stupid?”, anytime I’d ask for help with a math problem. She’d then accuse me of not listening when she worked a sample problem on the board. I always watched her very closely, but for the life of me, I could not grasp it no matter how I tried.
The reality was that she was either too lazy, or too preoccupied to help me. What’s worse was when I made an F on the test, she’d announce it aloud to the class as a way to punish me, making me the laughing stock of the class that day. She did this to a lot of kids.
I honestly dont know how I ended up passing, but by sheer luck, I passed Math by the skin of my teeth that year.
In time, I got better at Arithmetic, went on to college and recieved my degree. However, I never forgot that difficult time in the seventh grade nor the teacher who only made it harder.
I made sure not to let any of it define me or give me a sour attitude toward working with numbers. I also made sure that my own children didn’t endure the same humiliation when they were in school.
Today, I use what I went through to help kids who are bullied today and I’m pleasantly surprised at how it heals me and fulfills my soul.
Thank you so much for sharing your story. Kids today are committing suicide because of bullying and they need to know that they are not alone and that there’s nothing wrong with them- that even exceptional kids- kids who are celebrities get bullied too!
Childhood is or can be a nightmare.
Oh if teacher’s only knew what we remembered and how it affected us. School wasn’t hard for me. I don’t know why, just the brain I was born with. I remember in my first year at school (preps), I was in awe of this Year 5-6 teacher, who had the most beautiful classroom, so pretty and colourful. Her chalkboards were covered in the neatest most perfect handwriting I’d ever seen, with hand-drawn borders. She would wear long skirts, jangly bracelets, and carry a basket around like some kind of Australian Mary Poppins. She had toy penguins on her desk, and decorations hanging from the ceiling. I couldn’t wait to finally get to her classroom when I grew up. One day, she came to our prep room and asked for me. I didn’t know why. She asked me to bring my pencils, paper and ruler. I was nervous, but excited. She sat me down in her classroom (oh that beautiful classroom! I was in heaven!), and asked me to write three sentences about mowing the lawn (?) that did not start with the word ‘AND’. I carefully ruled my margins, then wrote in my best handwriting: The grass is very green today. Because it is long, it will need to be cut. My dad will mow the lawn. I finished the three sentences and put my hand up, heart beating hard. Would she be impressed that I could spell ‘because’? Was this some kind of test where I could jump ahead a few grades and be allowed to stay in this magical classroom? She came over, and picked up my paper. Instead of all my dreams coming true… she turned her back to me and marched over to a 12 year old boy. She held the paper in his face and loudly said in front of everyone ‘SEE – even a PREP can do this work!’. I wilted. I felt his embarrassment and shame. I was thanked and told to return to the prep room. I was ashamed of my work. I tried hard not to be so smart anymore.
Also, my husband is a survivor of abuse and a gaslighting, narcissistic mother. Actually, I think I survived her too as an adult…and that was bad enough. I can’t imagine how hard it would be as a child – when you are reliant on them, and have no option to escape. You can’t hang up the phone or leave. When you are in close proximity to a gaslighter even as an adult you can’t see the lies. They kind of wrap around you until they make sense and are the only truth. Gaslighting feels like a supernatural X-Men ability of mind persuasion – the only way out is distance, time and perspective…and talking to a third-party who isn’t under their spell. Sometimes we let our guard down, but we are very quickly reminded of why we limit contact and never allow her to be alone with our daughter. Words can damage quickly. Having a daughter has triggered so many memories for him. He is a loving, and beloved dad. Each little step of our daughter’s life has made him see the huge divide between how he treats her and loves her, and how he was treated as a child. So many times he’s realised how he would NEVER do what his parents did to him as a child. What was ‘normal’ for his childhood, he now recognises as abuse. He loves being a dad so much, but the daily impact of these revelations is very difficult – particularly now she has started school. One thing I remind him of – that it is such an achievement for him to break the cycle of abusive parenting, and raise such a happy, imaginative, strong-willed, intelligent and carefree child. Her childhood is a testament to his parenting – he is a success. I am so glad you have a supportive partner/best friend – we have each other too, and our daughter, and the most awesome cat, and a tiny quiet cottage surrounded by garden… and we are happy. Oh, and we have Lego. Lots of Lego.