Odd Child Out

                When I was three years of age, I was dropped off at my grandparents’ home along with my mother by a father who I would not see for the next decade. He soon would become a ghost who haunted my upbringing through photographs, rare Christmas gifts and postcards showing the landmarks of Sacramento. Usually when I was playing an imaginative game involving my Star Wars figures or watching a fantasy movie, my mother would comment that my father enjoyed science fiction and fantasy. Soon it became a conduit for trying to understand a man I never knew.

               

 My grandfather did the best he could having an energetic motor-mouthed child in his home. He had survived World War II and survived four children who questionably became adults that likely tested his sanity. He had little tolerance for my wiggling when at the dinner table and did not want to see evidence of my playtime. He no doubt loved me though but he struggled to connect with a child and see the world through my eyes. He taught me to ride a bike in a single day and refused to use training wheels. He was no nonsense but full of love. He just scared the hell out of me.

                My grandmother took on the primary role of my upbringing even though my mother resided in the same home. She was the typical product of a post WWII America which a strong Latter-Day Saint background. Many early mornings were spent lying in the bed next to my “granny” watching Robotech, Transformers or GI Joe after my grandfather had left for work. She fostered my imagination and encouraged me to enjoy my early childhood.

This environment was a bedrock for a child who could not understand why his parents were separated and did not understand why he did not have the same family make-up as his best friend a few houses down. Unfortunately, this bedrock was repeatedly disrupted every Sunday when my grandparents to me to church.

My mother had stopped attending LDS services long before I was born. She had been a hard partying teen and struggled to let go of that aspect of her during her twenties. Part of me wonders if that my attendance in church activities was the payment for allowing her and myself to live with my grandparents. Once I was left in the “primary school,” I was separated from the few friends I had in the neighborhood and was left in a class with vicious children who wanted nothing more than to exert their dominance on a younger child.

          I need to step back for a brief moment to explain the setup of the “classes” of the primary school. The children were separated by groups based on the calander year they were born in. So all the children who were born in 1977 were in the same class and all of the children born in 1978 were in a different class. My best friend was born in 1978 and due to this he was in a separate class. I doubt in any other situation it would have been an issue for me except that my birthday is December  31^st. It was a guarantee I would always be the youngest child in any church activity separated by age groups.

          I’m not sure when the teasing began, but it must have been fairly early. I was reminded frequently that my mother did not attend church like their mothers. I was reminded she was a smoker and smoking was bad. I was reminded that I did not have a father like they had. Finally, I was reminded constantly that I was the youngest in my group and I did not have a single person who liked me. These same children were also in my preschool class and the same diatribes were handed to me so regularly that I had most of their taunts memorized before the alphabet.

          I attempted to be kind to these children and play with them even when their taunting left me crying in my grandmother’s arms for hours after she took me home. I was an outgoing child who just wanted to have fun with as many people as possible and I could not understand why I wasn't being accepted as readily as I was willing to accept. This early pain slowly began to change from feeling the part of the victim to evolving into anger. When the verbal taunts started to transition to shows of physical dominance, the anger increased steadily. In a place that constantly preached the love of a higher power, I felt abandoned and powerless. When all I wanted to feel was accepted, I was frequently ostracized.

          As an adult in my mid thirties, I no longer feel that I am the victim of my upbringing and would change none of it, but as it was occurring I sooner began to empathize with Darth Vader than with the band of Rebels that stood up to the tyranny of the Empire. I wanted to crush my enemies and make them experience the pain I was enduring. Luckily, when I entered into kindergarten, I finally found a core group of friends who in their own ways had experienced similar difficulties with the mainstream kids.