Being a writer, I like to tell stories. So, if you are willing to listen, I will tell you one now. It is a story of abuse and violence, but there is triumph at the end. Did the triumph come right away? No, it took many years to happen and actually won’t be included in this tale, just know that it happens. Just know that this story -what happens in this story- is the catalyst for that years later triumph.
And, yes, this is an analogy. No need for me to hide it. Take from it what you will, folks.
When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine, my father was making breakfast. Scrambled eggs. My mom made scrambled eggs by mixing them directly in the pan in bacon grease. You cannot argue with scrambled eggs like that. But my dad, well, he mixed his eggs up first and cooked them in the pan with butter. No bacon grease.
Totally different flavor.
That morning, as my father stirred the eggs in the pan, I came out of my bedroom and he asked how much scrambled eggs I wanted.
“Lots,” I said, as starving, slightly overweight eight or nine year olds are known to say first thing in the morning.
“You sure? If I put lots on your plate, you better eat them all,” my father replied. “If you don’t, it’s your ass, kid.”
This was a common sentiment in my house- your ass. Kick your ass, bust your ass, break your ass, get your ass back here, better run your ass off. My ass was a big deal. It was an ass that got kicked, got busted, was broken, got back there, and, as a last resort, it did run right off.
Things in my house were not happy and healthy and full of huggy cheers and security or safety or love.
“I want lots,” I said, not even thinking that the “lots” of eggs would be the style my dad made, not the style of eggs my mom made.
I sat down at the table and he brought over my plate. It was lots. Lots and lots. The plate, one of the paper kind that you fit inside a wicker holder, was heaped with scrambled eggs. My dad’s scrambled eggs. Heavy, dense, too buttery, no salt, no pepper, no flavor. And made by him.
I had an instant bias towards anything made by him.
I sat there, staring at the plate of eggs, and something inside me rose up. I don’t know why it did at that moment, why my insides decided that was the time to rebel, to go all churny blech, and absolutely refuse to accept those eggs as food, but they did.
“I don’t want that many,” I said, trying to backtrack on my “lots” claim, hoping, since the eggs hadn’t been touched, that he would take some back. “That’s too many.”
“You said lots,” my dad replied, sitting down with his own plate of eggs. “That’s lots.”
Now, let’s be honest here- my father knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that the “lots” he heaped on my plate was well beyond reasonable. But, because he had warned me by asking if I really wanted “lots” then it was all fair game.
He had asked, I had answered. Tough shit for me.
So, even though I knew I had willingly stepped into the trap, even though I knew that my father had set me up once again, I decided that was the time I’d finally take a stand.
There was no way I was eating all of those eggs.
“Eat up,” he grinned and scowled at the same time. He had a skill with that sort of look. “They’ll get cold.”
“I don’t like them this way,” I said, a weak argument at best.
“You knew I was making them, so you knew what you were getting into,” he replied. “Eat the damn eggs.”
“I need ketchup,” I said and started to get up.
“Sit your ass down,” my dad responded. “You don’t need ketchup on everything.”
“I always have ketchup on my eggs,” I said. Which was true. Before I became a ranch dressing junkie, I was a ketchup junkie. It was kinda gross. “I never eat eggs without ketchup.”
“Start eating,” he said and got up to fetch me the ketchup.
I took a few bites and wanted to puke. There was no way I could choke down the Mt. Everest of single celled sustenance that stared back at me. I could maybe, maybe, tackle a tenth of it. Maybe.
The ketchup was produced and I squirted it on that Himalayan peak of yellow like I wanted to hide every last inch. Which I did. In my wonderfully flawless child logic, I figured that if it all tasted like ketchup then it would be fine.
Three bites in and I realized I had just ruined my favorite condiment.
“I can’t eat this,” I said.
But, my father knew that. He knew I wouldn’t be able to eat the amount of eggs he had served me and he watched with malicious glee as I tried to cover the things with ketchup. He knew full well I was about to bite into an over sweet nightmare of high fructose corn syrup and rubber.
“Eat the fucking eggs,” were his words as he glared at me. “You are not wasting those eggs.”
“You gave me too much,” I said. “I don’t want this much.”
“Tough titty,” he replied. “You’re gonna sit there until every last bite of those eggs are gone.”
Now, in my house, there was an unspoken rule of if you put something on your plate, you ate it. Which, normally, wasn’t a problem. I have been known to pretty much lick a plate clean and was the least finicky child eater ever in the history of adolescent gastronomy.
But that wasn’t happening with those eggs.
“I’m not eating these,” I stated. There was no room for argument in that statement. Apparently, in that instant, not only had my stomach rebelled, but my entire soul had also.
In the blink of an eye, I was no longer just taking a stand, I was ready to go to war.
I knew I’d lose. I knew things were going to go horribly wrong for me. But, fuck if I wasn’t girding my loans, sharpening my sword, and flexing my muscles!
“Eat the eggs or you sit there all day,” my dad said. “You are not leaving until those eggs are gone from that plate.”
And there it was. My Pearl Harbor. My Fort Sumter. My Concord.
I wasn’t leaving until the eggs were gone from my plate.
Well, there’s more than one way to clear a plate.
The thought of what I was about to do terrified me, yet exhilarated me beyond words. I simply cannot express the rush of feeling, of courage, of strength that flowed into my eight or nine year old self at the second I decided that if my father wanted the eggs gone from the plate then he was gonna see the eggs gone from the plate.
Being my father’s son in many ways, I also understood the art of the setup.
“I said I’m not eating these,” I stated once more, a small smirk forming at the corner of my mouth.
Now, this is where you need to know that my father was a predator. He spent his life, my childhood, hunting for reasons to hurt me. That smirk was all he needed to start his own war prep.
“Eat the fucking eggs and shut the fuck up,” he said. “I don’t want to hear another goddamn fucking word about the fucking eggs. Say anything else about those fucking eggs and your ass is grass.”
Ass is grass. I forgot to list that one.
“Fuck you,” I said.
Oh, sweet heaven! The joy!
“What did you fucking say, you little shit?” he snarled. “You will fucking eat those eggs right the fuck now! NOW!”
“No!” I yelled.
But my soul was screaming “THIS! IS! SPARTA!” and it kicked that plate of eggs into that well!
My fingers curled under the stained and cracked wicker frame that held a paper plate sagging under the weight of all of Arkansas’s hen production that year. I gripped the plate, felt each fiber, and then lifted my hands in slow motion triumph.
The look on my father’s face. That look. It said everything about my life.
There was rage. A kind of pure rage that only those that want to kill harbor inside themselves.
There was surprise. A surprise at the fact that the little shit would actually take it so far.
But most of all, there was happiness. A gleam in his eye that I had just made his morning. I had said I wanted lots, and he had warned me. I had said I had wanted ketchup, and he had warned me. I had said fuck you, and now had just thrown a full plate of eggs and ketchup at him.
He couldn’t have been more happy to have full justification to teach my ass a lesson.
Ass grass meet lawnmower named David Bible.
I don’t think the plate of eggs had even gotten halfway across the table before I was up on my feet, sending my chair flying out behind me, turning and running towards my bedroom.
I was so scared. There was a terror inside me that threatened to overwhelm me. I couldn’t talk my way out of that stunt. There was no going back, no saying sorry, no pleading that I didn’t do what I had just done.
It had happened and I was going to have to deal with it whether I wanted to or not.
And, truth be told, I wanted to.
I can remember so vividly the feeling of elation and freedom that blanketed my fear. After all the years of being whipped by leather belts, being shoved into corners and screamed at, being pulled by my ankles down the hall back to the spot I was ordered to “get back here!” to; after the nightmares and nights lying awake, planning, plotting, wishing his death; after all the times I had watched TV and saw loving, caring fathers and not knowing what that meant, thinking they were a cruel fiction made up by Hollywood to sell Doritos and Pepsi.
After all of that, I had struck back with a plate of eggs covered in ketchup and my soul sang with freedom!
It didn’t matter if I made it back to my room and locked the door in time. It didn’t matter if he whipped me until my sobs came so hard that I thought I would stop breathing and suffocate. It didn’t matter that even after it was all done I knew I’d be the one to go and clean all that shit up. It didn’t matter that the roar of rage that pursued me was filled with homicide and the intellectual side of me that would never, ever shut off kept saying I was going to die, this time I was actually going to die, he was going to do it, you’re dead, little shit, dead.
No, none of that mattered.
Because in those last few seconds before I reached my bedroom door, I felt justice happen. I knew I was wrong to throw those eggs, that I had broken the rules, but it didn’t matter. In those seconds I was living and fighting against the monster that nature and society had put there to be my protector, to be the one person that had my back, but had instead decided I was less than human and needed to be taught a lesson any violent chance he got.
Fuck the rules, fuck the mess, fuck my father. I probably wasn’t going to live through my childhood anyway, so what the fuck is a few eggs?
They were everything.
I may as well have pulled Excalibur from the stone.
Those last few seconds, I was in control.
Then I hit my door, rushed into my room, and tried to slam it closed.
But his foot got there first.
Do you want to hear what happened to me? Do you want to know the grisly details of that whipping? Do you want to know that he screamed at me the entire time that I had brought it on myself and that I deserved it because I was an ungrateful little shit? Do you want to know that in that moment I had plans to throw many, many more plates of eggs, because all I wanted to do was get back to those few seconds of freedom and triumph and feeling like I was a living, breathing human being worth something?
Do you want to hear any of that?
Probably not.
What you want to hear are the thoughts in your own head as you justify my father’s rage and what he did. I was wrong, I broke the rules. He was the authority figure and he was right.
I deserved every ounce of pain that day. Right? I deserved it. Kids shouldn’t be allowed to throw eggs at their abusers.
That’s what animals do. That’s what thugs do.
I was warned. I knew the rules. So why trash my own house? Why cover the dining room in eggs and ketchup that I would end up having to clean? Why do that to myself?
Because I needed to know I was alive. I needed to know that I hadn’t died at some point and was actually only the ghost of Jake Bible going through the motions.
I was eight or nine.
I needed someone to stand up for me, but there was no one there.
Except for myself.
So I stood. And I threw eggs. And I ran. And I lived.
I was beaten and called names no eight or nine year old should be called. I was beaten like an animal and treated like a thug.
Because I threw eggs and made a mess.
But, mostly I was beaten and called horrible, despicable names because I dared to question the authority that was there to protect me. I dared to cross the invisible line that had been set up by a psychopath bent on causing me as much misery as possible.
It had nothing to do with the eggs. It had nothing to do with the mess.
It had everything to do with my will.
And in our society willful children must be punished. They must be beaten. They must be told what little shits they are.
Because in this society the willful that finally fight back against all the anger and all the hate are not people, they are animals.
They are thugs.
And they deserve everything they get, right? Because they broke the rules.
RIGHT?
Right…