My Begining

Someday soon I hope to get back to painting and actually be able to post a finish picture here. In the mean time, I thought I would tell you a little about my childhood.

I was born a poor black child, without rhythm. Oh wait, that’s not me. That was Steve Martin in The Jerk. I, on the other hand, was born a poor white child, without rhythm. I am the second of seven children. Just for the record, none of us has rhythm.

Growing up with that many siblings was fun most of the time. You always had built in playmates around. But that didn’t mean that we didn’t torture each other. At times my older brother was a great playmate and at times he was unmercifully cruel. He made up terrible names for me and used them instead of my name whenever addressing me. J-O Junk, Skunk and Cow Pie, may not sound bad now but as a kid they were horrific to me. I think it really cut into my self-esteem, which wasn’t too great to begin with. I felt like my mother never protected me from his cruelty. Her response was, “Oh, he is just being a boy”.

One night I was kneeling at the side of my bed. I must have been around four years old. I was saying my prayers, The Hail Mary and Our Father. I was doing it half heartedly and rather loudly, almost like the prayers were a joke. My brother heard me and told me that I was going to go to hell.
“What is that?” I asked him.
“It is a very bad place that is all fire and you burn.” This scared me and I started crying. Steve, afraid of getting in trouble for making me cry, quickly added. “Don’t worry, me and Mom will go with you.”

I must have been a very gullible kid, because another time Steve told me that if you ever put anything down the heat registers at my grandparent’s house, the house would blow up. Well it wasn’t too many days later that my sister, Maryanne dropped some crayons down the register. Steve probably told her to do it. Anyway, I told my mother and expected her to gather us all up and get us the heck out of the house and far enough away that the exploding house wouldn’t hurt us. Instead, she and my grandmother took the grate off of the register and attempted to get the crayons out. I couldn’t figure out why they were doing that when the house was going to blow up at any minute, and she couldn’t figure out why I was in such a panic about crayons in the register.

Next blog I will tell you how I used to torture my younger sisters.