It was summertime. The year was 2002. Life was good on our Amish homestead. Except our family was a mess. Dad and Mom were in over their heads.
The extended family and the entire church caught in a massive scandal. Horrible, unspeakable accusations were being loaded onto one of Mom’s sisters. Uncle Mark in his glory, helping everyone everywhere.
My sister and I had had our good times. But you know, she had robbed me of my mom when I was just a little over a year old. So there was an undercurrent of rivalry. To her credit, the poor little thing was born two months premature just like I was.
Now, at this particularly difficult stage in life by all appearances, we had become arch-enemies. She claimed to love cats. I absolutely detested the creatures. Besides that, it was kinda fun to tease her. In my play, I had fashioned spears which I used to pretend hunt big game. On this particular sunny summer day, we were playing in the barn. She with her kittens. I with my spear. To tease her I joked that I was hunting cats. I got a pretty good response from her so I continued pretending to hunt cats with my spear.
At some point, I realized that things had gotten way out of hand. My sister was after me with a two-by-four. And by all appearances, she was NOT joking. I made a hasty retreat and slipped out between a crack in the two giant sliding doors milliseconds before the same doors shuddered at the blunt force of said two-by-four.
Sobered I found myself an alternative occupation.
Sometime later word comes around that I was in big trouble. My sister had shared the incident in group session, and Children’s Aid did not appreciate my joke. A definite sign of a developing violent brute. This guy is hardly safe to be with others and needs radical help.
So off we are to doctors appointments — nothing that Ritalin shouldn’t be able to fix.
So I was humiliated and made to take a dumb drug while my sister who actually attempted a violent act walked around with her nose in the air.
Retaliation
After months of meekly plodding on, taking the shit that was hurled at me I was full to bursting. I couldn’t take one lick more. My heart had become a cess pool of anger, bitterness, pain, and frustration. I would vindicate myself. So I arrived at group session fully loaded, ready for things to shift. I watched my chance, and at some point, I began talking. I spilled and spilled. The unfairness. The truth about how my sister was actually the violent one in the incident. How I had never touched her wrongly, lots of anger and pain and frustration came out that day.
I went home, it felt better to have let that out. And haha! get a taste of your own medicine. I waited around a few days and sure enough Uncle Joe shows up, he wants to talk with me. We sit down and he acknowledges having heard my pain and frustration. But he says they talked things over and decided not to share what I said with Children’s Aid. There would be no point in getting my sister in trouble.
My God! The unfairness felt like someone took the plunger of a John Deere baler and shoved all that stuff several levels deeper into somewhere inside. At that point, I realized my sister wasn’t really the one that had it out for me. I loved Uncle Joe and respected his level-headed attitude. But why, oh why couldn’t the same have been done for my sake?
P.S. You may wish to read the next post Dark Span.