Of the many women I've loved, there hasn't been one who had a really good relationship with their mother (although most would disagree with my assertion.) That includes my sister, who did a pretty good job of concealing the problems, nor my mother, who often had a quite contentious relationship with her mother, and my nieces, all of whom had various levels of difficulty with their mothers.

I never knew Blondie's mother, but I don't care much for her. Blondie says I'm being unfair, that her mother would have loved me, and I'd have loved her, but I have heard too many stories of Blondie's growing up. When she was a teenager, she smarted off to her mother, and her mother slapped her. Blondie slapped her back, and from then on, instead of slapping Blondie, her mother would call on Blondie's father to discipline her. "Ben!" she would cry, and my father in law would come in and plead, in exasperation, for Blondie to behave.

Exasperation

I can understand that exasperation. And I don't disapprove of physical punishment. It's far better than emotionally battering a kid. Spanking is deliberate, and kids understand why they are being spanked. While being spanked is painful for the kid, the parent's hand has more nerve endings than the kid's butt, so there's not going to be any real damage. And unlike cruel words, once a spanking is over, it's over. But slapping someone in the face is done in anger, not in calm deliberation.

As Craig Ferguson would say, "We welcome your letters. CBS cares." I'd actually kinda like someone to argue the other side, because I know I can't present it properly, for I ain't buying it.

Like one in six men, one if four girls, I experienced traumatic abuse before the age of twelve. Peer counseling helped me work out my problems a couple of decades ago, and then I engaged in peer counseling to pay it forward. I heard lots of stories, and undoubtedly not all were truthful, but sometimes, it seemed like more survivers were minimizing their issues rather than exaggerating them.

Lucky, In A Way

I was lucky, in a way. I had wandered away when we were visiting relatives and was abused by strangers, a relatively uncommon situation. When my mother discovered the weals and blisters on my body - I was in severe pain that evening - she demanded to know what had happened. I was afraid of further punishment for having wandered away, so I stayed mum.

Most of those I counseled, though, blamed their mothers. In most cases, the mother not only should have known what was happening, but in many cases, she was a participant. One survivor said she went to the doctor regularly with her mother. Her hypochondriac mother got treated, and the doctor had coitus with a prepubescent daughter in payment.

Another survivor said her mother pimped her out to a group that included her in 8-mm bestial films starring a billy goat. Far more common were stories of having to share a bed with mother and mother's boyfriend, with mother simply closing her eyes to the boyfriend's rape of the daughter.

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

This sort of thing still goes on. I don't know why that should surprise me; human nature hasn't changed since the days of the barbarian hordes.

Em and I had wanted a large family, and that hadn't happened. When I started dating, my ad said that I enjoyed being a dad, so pregnant women and mothers were of interest to me. One woman responded that her tubes were tied, but she had a 13-year-old daughter that would bear all the children I might want. In horror, I considered contacting child protective services. Maybe, though, she was just teasing. I didn't respond to her message.

Kathy Was Twelve

Em used to tell of her 12-year-old cousin, Kathy, who was making a cake when her mother wandered by and noticed the careless way she'd broken the egg. It wasn't that there was egg shell in the cake. It was that she'd merely broken the shell and allowed the egg to drop by gravity. Her mother had taught her that you were supposed to use your thumb to wipe out every drop of egg white from the shell, and here, she'd wasted those three drops of egg white.

Eggs are, like other foods, rather expensive these days. Last time I bought some, they were $1.80. That's 15c each egg, which means those few drops of egg white are probably worth a quarter of a cent. Never the less, her mother was enraged by this wastefulness, and apparently, things had been building, because mother slugged Kathy in the gut. Kathy slugged her back, and was ordered out of the house, immediately.

She went to a friend's house, and that evening, the friend's father went to speak to Kathy's father. "There's nothing to talk about," he was told. "I don't have a daughter."

A Friend Indeed

The friend's family was as sympathetic as could be, but there was no room; their own kids were already sleeping on the floor. Within a couple of days, Kathy found a widower who wanted a housekeeper, and she moved in with him. Ten months later, she died trying to deliver a stillbirth. Every May 12, Kathy's birthday, I would come home to find a candle in the window, burning in remembrance.

Dick Butkus, of the Chicago Bears in the 1960s, used to speak before groups, and he included a line that went "When I played pro football, I never set out to hurt anyone deliberately - unless it was, you know, important, like a league game or something."

In other words, he wasn't malicious. And that is the difference between one's enemies and one's families. Your enemies aren't malicious. You're simply standing between them and something they want. Praise God for your enemies, for those who have no enemies end up with family instead.

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abuse - bestiality - Chicago Bears - Craig Ferguson - Dick Butkus - eggs - enemy - malice - mothers - pedophilia - spanking - survivor