WelcomeDraft proposal to have been presented to the man and the woman who brought me into this world, for raising me
General principle: Respect me and earn my respect. Negotiate not dictate. Note there is nothing in this proposal which would have been beyond your financial means. If you could not have met the minimum criteria you either should not have become pregnant with me or else have transferred me to persons who would have been capable of and willing to so.
As the saying goes, this is not rocket science; it's simple respect and decency which would have helped you become better persons, too. (This plan inspired by Russia's 17 December 2021 proposal for a new European security architecture. Both plans intended to break unipolar hegemony of one superpower and replace it with a multipolar order.[1])
Counterfactual speculations are always merely speculative. But I do have one example showing that I would have been willing to compromise with them: The doctor using a tongue suppressor to inspect my throat was intolerable for me: I would gag. I found that by straining to open my mouth as wide open as I could, the doctor did not need to use the intolerable thing to see down my throat. The problem was that my parents and school teachers needed to "come down off their high horses" and respectfully engage with me as their peer not "lord it over me" as a subordinate creature. Turning a cliche on its head: "Who did they thin they were?"
Things that could have been expected no matter how ignorant or impecunious you were
"Tom, do what you believe is right. You will make mistakes. We stand behind you." (Tom Gee's mother; poor Appalachian dirt farmer with perhaps 4th grade education)
- Have a physician surgically remove all moles (nevi) on my body before I would have noticed them, especially the one on my upper left chest. This is the number 1 priority item becaue you having failed to do it wrecked my whole coming life [Note that I did once ask my father to to do this, after my mother had told me a neighbor's daughter had had moles removed. This took much courage for me. HE FAILED TO ACT.]
- Have prevented me from being genitally mutilated aka: "circumcised". (You should have wanted me to have maximum opportunity for erotic pleaseure in my coming life but that may have been too much to expect from you.). All that was required of you here was to not do something harmful.
- Never minimize, discount or try to dissuade me from my nwegative reactions to environmental stimuli. When I would protest about not liking something (including yourselves) you should always have asked me: "Are you really sure it's not even worse than you area saying it is?".
- Assure me that you would not hurt me yourselves and be vigilant to shelter and protect me from being harmed by others. Try to comfort me including cuddling my fragile little body if I would like that (I may not have found you physically repulsive had you not come across to me as intrusive?)
- Provide me with a pet cat to love and care for.
- Have protected me from being hairrcutted (If the police or law courts mandated you to do it to me you would have done it as seldom and as little as possible without regard for what you might whim it to look like)[2]: Always keep in mind that it's my body, not a doll for you to dress up and "play house" with.
- Never have subjected me to being out in the sun.
- In general, have negotiated with me about matters instead of "telling me what to do". In cases where I had to do something I did not want to do (e.g.: medical procedures, have enegotiated with me how to minimize the trauma to me (especialy you would not have abandoned me to the nurse who stuck the long steel needle (painful for me to look at this picture) up the back of my lower arm while you two sat as clueless lumps on a bench in the waiting room).
- You would have had me wear comfortable clothing, including specifically not "blouses" that choked me around the neck or the spring loaded device to keep down shirt collars. And never have subjected me to "fitting" for pants where the tailor stuck pins in the pants to "fit" them. I was not a baby doll or mannekin for you to dress up and my clothes should have been selected with the aim of my feeling comfortable in them, not me looking like some fantasy you entertained.
- Never have subjected me to anal enemas. If you felt prunes would be good for me, have pureed them not tried to force me eat them whole. (I had no objection to drinking prune juice.)
- Have provided me some space in the house where I could be sure that what I put there would be left untouched by your obsessive intrusive housecleanng.
- To reiterate: General principle: Negotiate respectfully with me not dictate to me aka: Don't tell me what to do.
- Gently taught me about self-pleasuring (aka: "masturbation") at the erliest physiologically appropriate developental stage. (I am aware that this may have been beyond your abilities.)
- Buy a solid in-town house you could afford not a boondoggle beyond your means in the suburbs that would be hard to sell, and where mother, since she could not drive an automobile but one needed to drive the car to go anywhere, would devolve into alcoholic depression.
- You would have encouraged me to report to you anything that displeased me so that you could help me deal with it. Item: the one semester in 7th grade where was in a public school thretened by free-range juvenile delinquents romaing the halls (see immediately following item abou this).
- You would not have done foolish things that didn't work like coercing me to take piano lessons and especially playing in the school band that one semester in 7th grade that messed up my schedule so that I was separated form my elementary school class to be in classes with lower class uncouth children to accommpdate the deviant class schedule for "band practice". (You could have inroduced me to serious music, e.g.: Bach, but that was beyond your abilities.)
- You would have taken caring interest in how I spent my days, not intrusively micro-managing me but finding out how you could help me according to my own judgment of benefit: Asked me what I might want not tell me what to do.
- You sold always have kept social distance unless I freely let you come closer. You needed to accept that I did not like your bodies.
For reference, you could phavve modelled your behavior in regard to me on Luke 2:41-52 in he Bible.
Things I needed but which wre probably beyond your capacity
- Find me female companionship at my level of intelligence and sensitivity,
- Find me a school which was caring and craetive.
- Find me adults with whom I could do interesting things, not such inappropriate activities as "Cub Scouts". Maybe join the Unitarian Church?
Things you did do right by intent
- Father found a psychiatrist who wrote a letter for me that got me certified as unfit for military conscription for Vietnam.
To sum up again
I think I would have been willing to negotiate an equitable compromise with my parents and school (and government, too, in its time), based on the rational principle:
If I do not care about what matters to you then I have no reason to expect you to care about what matters to me. If you do not care about what matters to me then you have no reason to expect me to care about what matters to you.
Them help me and me help them. This follows from what I have quoted from Melanie Klein elsewhere: here. Win-win. [My parents were clueless. My school teaches were mean-spirited. My government most of all wanted a free lunch out of me (SSS identification number: 18-11-46-503). But lots of other people want to get a free lunch without fessing up to it, too.]
But that's not the way they approached me. It was them tell me what to do, and me do what they told me to do. Them give orders and me obey.
They would not have liked it if the roles wer reversed, would they? Why did they do unto me as they would not have done unto them? I speculate two principal reasone: (1) They were benighted: they had been socially conditioned to be that way, and (2) They hadn't like it when they were on the receiving end so they are taking it out on me instead of their own parents and teachers, because the latter might have fought back wheraas I was vulnerable.
(1) Unreflected but convenient-for-themselves "idiocy", combined with (2) kicking the cat (me). And by keeping me ignorant, either intentionally and/or conveniently unwittingly, I did not realize what they were doing to me so they got away with it. Te only evidence I can produce is that I figured out 2 way for physicians to inspect my body without using procedures I found intolerable (here, and here.
I imagine I would have even been willing to be a collaborator: to help them maintain their regime of autocratic power over other young persons, who didn't seem to mind it like I did. If all the other boys liked getting haircutted I could have scheduled barber shop appointments for them. If they liked being tested and graded I could have handled their student records, making sure the teachers got grades in on time. Just not for me, thank you. [They would probably be offended at this: a child who did not know "his place". Like "Southern whites" felt about "uppity negroes" before Civil Rights, yes? My teachers were my masters.]
Footnotes
- ↑ The analogy is close: The United States tries to encircle Russia with NATO to turn it into a client state: a supplier of raw materials. My parents and, later, my teachers tried to encircle me to reduce me to being their colony. Or like the Saigon regime and the Vietnamese peasants. They were imperialist aggressors. But I was more like Vietnamese peasants than Russia since I had no weapons with which to defend myself, not even a Fifth Amendment right: Because we want only what is good for you, you shouldn't even try to defend yourself against us, i.e.: defend yourself against your own best interests. We only want what is best for you, so we have to make you do it whether or not you understand and appreciate it....
- ↑ Instructions to barber: "This child does not like being here so be a quick as you can. Do not under any circumstance use a razor because that traumatizes him. Take off only what is necessary for him to be allowd to attend school. If possible do not leave any itchy sniplets of cut hair on his body which require him to take a unnecessary bath. Do AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, TO UPSET THE CHILD AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE, and let him get out of here as quickly as possible. THANK YOU."
