Blog for the First Week

People often ask me -- well, students often ask me; adults are usually too polite to ask me such a personal question -- why I don't want to have children. It seems to me that the answer is pretty obvious: I was a child, and I remember how I treated my parents. What other reason do I need?

The teenage years are supposed to be a time of rebellion, a time when we try to separate ourselves from our families so we can be individuals, become our own people instead of a member of the group into which we were born. I suppose I can understand that, but the question I ask myself is, "Did I really need to be that much of a jerk?" I was a jerk, a complete and utter twit, in many ways and to many people, and I've always wished I hadn't acted the way I did. There are very few things in my past that I regret, but one of the big ones is the way I treated my parents when I was a teenager.

Two things stand out in my memory. Actually, as I'm sitting here writing this, more bad memories keep floating up in my mind like bubbles of noxious gas in a fetid swamp; I keep thinking, "Oh, and there was that time I . . . and what about when . . . oh yeah, I forgot about that one. That was a bad one." And I wasn't even a bad kid -- I can't imagine what some of my least favorite students could put on their lists. But one thing that stands out strongly in my head was when I cursed at my mother.

I love my mother. She's a wonderful woman, kind, generous, fun, adventurous, brave -- everything a mom should be. But like any mother, she can be kind of a nag; a problem worsened, of course, by my habit of ignoring her when she asked me to do something like clean my room or take out the garbage. I don't honestly remember what she was telling me to do that time; it was most likely something about the public area of the house, the living room or dining room or kitchen, and cleaning up the mess I left in there. That's usually what it was. I've always been a slob, always left a trail of coat/hat/gloves/backpack/shoes through the house from the front door, always left dirty dishes wherever I ate the food off of them or at best in a leaning tower of porcelain in the kitchen sink. My mother would tell me, again and again, to clean up this mess and that mess, but since she worked full time and also volunteered at a local charity, she was usually telling me this on her way out the door, and I would say, "Okay," and then go right back to watching TV or playing video games after she was gone. Sometimes I even meant to clean up in a few minutes, but I rarely did it.

It could have been any year I was in high school; it could have been any room of the house; it could have been any occasion, a visiting friend or relative, Spring Cleaning, or just my mom reaching crisis point with the filth, about to start running through the house wild-eyed, pointing and yelling, "UNCLEAN! UNCLEAN!" like some foaming-at-the-mouth Puritan transported from the Salem witch trials to downtown Portland. Whatever it was, she asked me to clean up, then told me to, then told me in a loud voice, and finally yelled at me -- and for whatever reason, whether I was in a bad mood or just feeling like a particularly rebellious teenager, when she yelled, I yelled back. But where she had said something like, "Dusty, CLEAN UP THAT MESS!" I yelled, "Freak out!" But I didn't yell "out," I said, "off;" and instead of "Freak," I yelled a word that started with F, and rhymed with duck.

I've never seen my father that angry. Ever. Not even when my brother almost burned the house down, trying to dry his wet laundry on top of a lamp (Please note: don't do that.). That's the closest I've ever come to being punched, and it was only my father's non-violent nature that saved me -- that and a lot of begging. But it wasn't fear that made me regret what I said; actually, it wasn't my father at all. It was the look on my mother's face. I still remember how hurt she looked when I said that.

I have no justification for saying what I did; I don't even remember the explanation, though I think I remember just thinking -- I wonder if I could get away with this. If my father hadn't been in the room, I probably would have; Mom was never the disciplinarian. But getting away with it wouldn't have made it all right. Nothing would have made it all right. I shouldn't have said that to her, plain and simple. I've always regretted it.


QUESTION FOR THE WEEK:
What have you done that you regretted? Why did you do it? What should you have done instead?
(Note: it doesn't have to be something you feel bad about, just something you would/should have done differently.)
Blogs must be posted on this site by Friday, February 6.