So today I finally finished what I started years ago -- reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. It was quite good and I'm glad I've finally read it. In the face of reading Zen and the Art of Robert Pirsig's Ego, it was refreshing in its honesty (and lack of psuedo-philosophy.)
Egger's book also caused one of those proverbial forehead slaps we all have from time to time. In his interview with MTV he tells the story of his father, drunk and violent and angry at whatever child-misdeed, breaking down his son's bedroom door. Eggers also recollects his childhood hopes of the child-abuse being discovered by some tattling teacher, suspicious of curious bruises and whatnot.
And thats when it hit -- I always think about how unpunished my childhood seemed in comparison to my brothers (not that I know for sure, the next youngest is 6 years older.) I always attributed it to my being relatively "good." I don't doubt that part of that is true, but I was also deathly afraid of my parents -- I had the shit beat out of me a couple of times. All before I turned 8. The last time I recall being punished, when I was in 7, I had to explain to the teacher that the bruises on my face were from falling off my bike. Dubious. And I always thought that was the end of that. But now I suspect not.
I really don't know or understand the affects such discipline (loosely used) had on me. At once I feel I'm beyond it, that I recognize what they did was mistaken, that they came from a different time and place and simply didn't know better. At the same time, its something I think of from time to time, something I vow never to be like, something I don't like to think of because I can still recall the shame in answering my teacher's probing question.
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