I'm going to engage in a time-honored activity and complain about my mother. Yesterday she took one of my happiest memories of childhood and turned it into something... else.
I've commented before about how my parents didn't know what to do with their geeky, introverted, ADHD kid. I don't recall ever being "that bad" as an ADHD kid; if I didn't have the greatest attention span in class I always excelled academically and never got into fights.
The memory is a simple one of a day forty years ago, probably both worn down and smoothed over, and embellished with color and sound, as happens over that much time. A science museum in South Miami (so sad, I see it's gone now) was having an oceanography exhibit that I really wanted to attend. My mother didn't want to go. So I went by myself.
I was twelve. It was 1979. I rode my bicycle through twenty-five miles of Broward and Dade county. Florida is very flat, there are no hills, and I was a twelve-year-old who had spent his entire active life either in the water, on a bicycle, or climbing trees. I drove through Little Cuba, and I recall the sights and the smells (oh, the smells of the food, I really do miss that food in Seattle). I bought my own lunch and my own ticket to the museum, had a fantastic day, and rode back home in time for dinner. Fifty miles in a day. Certainly the furthest I'd ever ridden, but I don't remember being exhausted when I got back. I do miss the resilience of youth.
There were no cell phones and I hadn't told her where I was going, and after calling all my friends she realized she didn't know where I was.
This wasn't that unusual, actually. I'd often gone and spent the entire day at the library (especially the second, bigger one further East, as they had a few TRS-80s I could play with!).
My mother has had a life-long terror of "stranger danger." When she learned I'd gone all the way to Virginia Island and back, she freaked out. I'd ridden through Miami, which is full of brown people who who are poor and who don't speak English ("I mean they do but they don't like to and they won't, not unless they want something from you") and are therefore dangerous.
Apparently, this incident was the "last straw." This was the precipitating moment when my mother, and even my father who had long left the family to follow his own path, decided I needed to be sent away to a boarding school "so they can watch you all the time." This was the reason I didn't grow up with my family.
I'm surprisingly angry about this. I wasn't an angel; the gods know I was a difficult, geeky, introverted teenager. But I never hit anyone, never got into fights. I didn't do drugs. I didn't go into parks looking for strange men to have sex with. I didn't run in gangs or scrawl graffiti. I rode my bicycle to libraries and bookstores (often very strange bookstores, like the D&D gaming store up near the Seminole reservation, 10 miles from home), to computer classes and video game arcades.
This, my wonderful all-day adventure to a fucking science exhibit, was what triggered her to have me cloistered away at an all-male Anglican high-school for the rest of my teenage years.
The gods grant that when I'm 80 years old, I say nothing that taints my children's happy memories of their teenage years.
I've commented before about how my parents didn't know what to do with their geeky, introverted, ADHD kid. I don't recall ever being "that bad" as an ADHD kid; if I didn't have the greatest attention span in class I always excelled academically and never got into fights.
The memory is a simple one of a day forty years ago, probably both worn down and smoothed over, and embellished with color and sound, as happens over that much time. A science museum in South Miami (so sad, I see it's gone now) was having an oceanography exhibit that I really wanted to attend. My mother didn't want to go. So I went by myself.
I was twelve. It was 1979. I rode my bicycle through twenty-five miles of Broward and Dade county. Florida is very flat, there are no hills, and I was a twelve-year-old who had spent his entire active life either in the water, on a bicycle, or climbing trees. I drove through Little Cuba, and I recall the sights and the smells (oh, the smells of the food, I really do miss that food in Seattle). I bought my own lunch and my own ticket to the museum, had a fantastic day, and rode back home in time for dinner. Fifty miles in a day. Certainly the furthest I'd ever ridden, but I don't remember being exhausted when I got back. I do miss the resilience of youth.
There were no cell phones and I hadn't told her where I was going, and after calling all my friends she realized she didn't know where I was.
This wasn't that unusual, actually. I'd often gone and spent the entire day at the library (especially the second, bigger one further East, as they had a few TRS-80s I could play with!).
My mother has had a life-long terror of "stranger danger." When she learned I'd gone all the way to Virginia Island and back, she freaked out. I'd ridden through Miami, which is full of brown people who who are poor and who don't speak English ("I mean they do but they don't like to and they won't, not unless they want something from you") and are therefore dangerous.
Apparently, this incident was the "last straw." This was the precipitating moment when my mother, and even my father who had long left the family to follow his own path, decided I needed to be sent away to a boarding school "so they can watch you all the time." This was the reason I didn't grow up with my family.
I'm surprisingly angry about this. I wasn't an angel; the gods know I was a difficult, geeky, introverted teenager. But I never hit anyone, never got into fights. I didn't do drugs. I didn't go into parks looking for strange men to have sex with. I didn't run in gangs or scrawl graffiti. I rode my bicycle to libraries and bookstores (often very strange bookstores, like the D&D gaming store up near the Seminole reservation, 10 miles from home), to computer classes and video game arcades.
This, my wonderful all-day adventure to a fucking science exhibit, was what triggered her to have me cloistered away at an all-male Anglican high-school for the rest of my teenage years.
The gods grant that when I'm 80 years old, I say nothing that taints my children's happy memories of their teenage years.
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