November 24 2002:
"It hurts! It hurts!"
Small child lies on his stomach on a bed. Private daycare: professional babysitters named Bertie and Ted. Nice people, but, even to his inexperienced small-child thinking, seemingly a little slow on the uptake. He's sick: they're taking his temperature. They use an anal thermometer. It's broken.
"It hurts! It hurts!"
"It doesn't hurt. Hold still."
It does hurt. They don't believe him until they take it out. Then they apologize.
"I'm a nurse. I think that arm's broken."
Tear-stained face of a five or six year old, very thin and tall, delicate thin bones like the limbs of insects. Red, swelling welt, very ugly. He's fallen from a set of overhead bars. Bertie says, "You're not hurt." She doesn't believe him until the nurse steps in. Later at the hospital she apologizes.
A fall from a tree. Swinging on a coiled vine like Tarzan. Right arm is broken: he knows the feeling from experience. His mother doesn't believe him. "Take some aspirin." That was a Friday afternoon. She waits until Monday morning to take him to the doctor. Over the weekend she encourages him to go out and play. Instead he carefully immobilizes the arm between pillows, refusing to move. He's about eight. Monday after the x-ray, she apologizes.
"Us intelligent people gotta stickta gether."
Upstairs neighbor woman, drunk in the afternoon, swishing a tumbler of something on ice. He's eight and, even to his inexperienced child-thinking, she's definitely not an intelligent person.
The results of his IQ test threaten to change the world. The authorities want to send him to a special school for smart kids. He's smart enough to know better. He'll never again be in the right place. At home he'll be the smart kid who goes to the special school. At school he'll be the poor kid from the other side of town. It'll be isolating, for no real gain other than his mother's self-esteem.
She sends him anyway. It's inevitable. Nothing happening, works in a factory, no goals, nothing to be proud of or set her hopes on besides her smart kid who the authorities think is special. She's in such fear of those in authority that there's never any doubt.
He's miserable in the new school. The kids are hateful. His teacher, Mrs. Schulmann, says, "I know where you're from. You're lower class." Sounding remarkably like the drunk neighbor woman with the tumbler of something on ice. He learns to hate learning. No-one apologizes.
All through your childhood the adults are inept. Unable to assess circumstances, they make mistake after mistake, until you learn to evade them through misinformation. By lying, you diminish their power to do the wrong things. But, you grow up isolated.