Children and Chilren. Two words which are spelled differently but loosely mean the same thing. Children is the term I use when I am in professional settings. When I have to take my son to the god awful expensive daycare, there, they are children. In public, when we are at the Target, he is at the toy section, ripping every toy down in sight and as a parent, who is trying to be somewhat sophisticated yet cool, he is my child. Or at the god awful pricey Baby Gap--where I have to buy the clothes needed to fit into his daycare and he is going every way but the right way, you say, publicly, son, you're not helping daddy. On the surface this is cute and cuddly, especially if you are on the outside looking in. But on the inside, knowing the social norms, established by The Dominant Other, you cannot say what is on your mind or do what comes instinctively. You can't say "Boy, if you don't act right, I'm going to come down on you three different ways: long, hard, and frequent." Its funny how as a parent, especially as a middle class Black folk, you kinda have to really suppress the actions you learned from your parents when you acted out when you too were a child. I remember when Jocasta, aka Lady McBeth, (the my nickname for my mother) had no problem, no shame in in shooting me the glare. The glare was like defcon 3. It said an asswhippin was on the horizon but not eminent. When it got down to defcon 2, she would forget her private post secondary school education and start splitting verbs. Now when an English major starts to split verbs, especially the one who would go on to obtain a Ph.D. in English and Woman's studies, it was like I said before. I was tied to the railroad tracks and the train was coming. If I was really begging to made an example of--we then arrived at Defcon 1. Defcon 1 usually meant, I had a meeting in the ladies room and I would come out pretty much in tears. But hold on: there is one final level, Defcon 0. Defcon 0 meant war had officially been declared. At this moment, anything could and 9 times out of 10 would happen. I mean Lady McBeth would pull some CIA/Steven Segal type mind tricks on my ass. Classic line; "When I get you home, I'm going to tear that tail all to pieces." Now the only thing worse than a beating is knowing its going to happen but, not knowing when. In my home this could be delayed for a few days. So I could be up all night with the flashlight in my room hiding under the covers with the bedroom door barricaded. You don't want to be caught by surprise by the asswhipping. When I was under the "asswhipin watch" I was at my most obedient. But that still couldn't stop one from the inevitable. To make matters even worse, when my mom and dad were together, they would "cross talk." This meant they would actually pull the United Front on my tail. If it were the medieval days, it would be the equivalent me walking the corner and seeing my dad in Ye Olde Woodshed, building my personal stockade. "Come hither boy, allow me to see if this hole fit thy neck." If it were the wild wild west, it my dad would be the undertaker while mom would be Clint Eastwood. "Get three coffins ready." After the shootout, she would incidentally say, "My mistake four coffins." But this was the 1970s and my parents just got through watching Roots. I don't know why but after watching Roots, every black person in the America suddenly had some type of pent up rage and they had to release it. So my dad would come in to my room one night just out of the blue three days or so after I put my name right beside the word ignorant in a public place. "You know you got a beating coming right?" So my world is really just twisted, because I thought I had escaped the asswhippin advisory. I'm like you mean I been being extra nice only to catch this beatdown somewhere down the road. I'm in the room pleading with my dad, "Can't yall just beat me now and get it over with. Please?" Don't torture me with the anticipation come on already, just tune my tail up I'll be good for three months. For them, the hunt was on and of course as Charles S Dutton says, I was the prey.
Please believe it though-- when the overdue asswhippin arrived, my mom threw the ticker taped parade because she didn't have to administer the whippins of death. When the whippins of death arrived, those were administered by dad. I am still in awe how a man who drank so much liquor, smoked so many packs of cigarets had the gamma radiation strength to just tear my tail all to pieces. I got the beating so bad one time, I was like, I gotta do something different. Either they are going to change or I'm going to change. This is where too much TV and janet jackson became a potentially lethal combination. After watching the Good Times episode where the character Penny is introduced as a victim of child abuse, guess who goes to school the next day talking child abuse about his parents. Again, did I mention the words "potentially lethal."
No -- I didn't catch the beatdown behind that, gamesmanship loves gamesmanship. But lets just say that Lady McBeth shared with me on the way to school that she and dad knew about the child abuse claim and they were waiting for the right time to have conversation with me about it after school..
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