I learned a lot in my early life. In fact, my youngest years were so full of experience that they give me no end (at least, so far) to colorful stories. One of those stories has to do with trashcans and the way that we humans are so very programmable.
Specifically, that children, adults, too, will form attachments to whatever source of sustenance is available.
In my earliest years, my parents, or really, they were more bio-donors, since they had no love for me, lived in a tiny, two-room apartment in Paterson, New Jersey. The living room and kitchen were connected. The only other room was a small bedroom and bathroom. There was a small window in the living room where I’d spend hours watching flies crawl up and down the glass, and where I’d watch the neighbors hanging their wash across ropes that spanned the nest of brownstone buildings in our neighborhood.
Our trashcan at the time was a paper sack that sat beside the refrigerator until it was full enough that it’s by then oily sides were bursting. It attracted flies and smelled terrible after it had sat beside the fridge for a couple days, but to me that paper sack was beautiful.
It represented food. The stilling of the constant gnawing of my stomach. It offered the experience of tastes that I was forbidden, like pizza crusts with bits of cheese and sauce stuck to them or bits of fried rice at the bottoms of Chinese take out boxes.
I learned very quickly that when my parents were in one of their moods, looking for someone to fight with who couldn’t hurt them, that they found any excuse at all to blame me. Sure, they used their fists to express themselves on my body, but I was too young for them to feel completely satisfied once they’d reduced me to a hiccup-y mess of tears and bruises. So they’d keep other things from me, like food.
Oh, my father was actually pretty good at letting me have food. He’d even take me to the soda shop for a black and white shake, telling the soda clerk over and over exactly how to make it, as if the poor guy had never made a shake before.
Maybe I’d messed my diaper once too often and she had to choose between buying cigarettes or Pampers. Maybe I’d colored on the walls during the long afternoons when she left me alone in the apartment. Maybe I’d dared to complain when I couldn’t force myself to choke down a slice of toast burnt to charcoal.
Whatever the reason, she’d refuse to give me any more food that day.
I learned early that life is a game in many ways. If I was to survive, I had to develop a strategy. For example, if my mother refused to feed me on a day when my father actually came home for dinner, he would make sure I got something to eat.
Like the mob boss who had the power to take people out at a moment’s notice, my father would pour all the bits of sweetness that he could muster into the few minutes he’d see me. Perhaps to make up for the late night “house calls” to replace tubes in the televisions of sweet young things, or perhaps to usurp my mother’s power to get back at his own parents in an oblique way. I was very young. I knew little of motives except what I learned from watching them.
Whatever the case, he’d caress my hair and speak in a sweet, gentle voice.
“How are you today?” he’d ask, as if he was really interested. “Did you have a good day? Did you color some pictures for Daddy?” If I was smart, I’d have colored pictures ready for him.
