Or perhaps I am just disorganized.
In computers, there are two kinds of memory access:
Sequential Access in which the data must be read in order from start to finish (tape drives, for example), and Random Access in which data may be read in any order without penalty. This is where the term 'Random Access Memory' or 'RAM' comes from. Of course, the reads aren't really random. It would have been more accurate to describe such memory as Arbitrary Access, but RAM is a lot catchier than AAM, and technical righteousness is always going to take a backseat to marketing.
Human memory, on the other hand, is very random. Constantly accessing information you weren't even looking for. Memories bubble to the forefront of your thoughts entirely out of sequence. It is for this reason that I will almost certainly be bouncing back and forth between timeframes. That said, I am going to piece together the bits I can remember from before the time my first brother was born.
I was born in Seattle. Even from a very young age I remember that my family was struggling, economically. This was largely because my dad preferred not to work.
My father is a genius, and an artist; A natural with computers and structured logic in a time when it was far less common than it is now. He is brilliant as a musician and as a conversationalist. As is so often the case, such gifts come at a price. My father is also a lazy man with no ambition. It was almost as if he was afraid to achieve his potential. Worst of all, it was never in his heart to pay attention to his children. As the eldest, I did receive more than my fair share of what little attention he doled out. That said, if I never make the effort to contact my father, I will never see or hear from him again. Being the favorite simply means that he is less resistant to spending time with me when I do call. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I have seen my father exactly 3 times since the age of 21. In each instance, I initiated that contact. I am nearly 40 now.
I spent a good portion of my life assuming that it was incumbent upon me to become sufficiently noteworthy. I followed science and computers and delved into music in a big way. In many ways I became my father, or my perception of him. The last time I saw him, despite having not talked with him in over 10 years, I saw that he had purchased the exact same computer components and built the exact same computer that I built. This isn't some prebuilt deal, but a built from scratch custom computer. Our components were nearly identical. Even after years of not seeing my father, I am so closely connected with his value system and his way of thinking that I come to the same conclusions an uncanny percentage of the time.
It worries me how closely I mirror his thought patterns, because I do not want to be this person.
Once I was old enough to understand that treatment was unequal between my brothers and I, it made me feel uncomfortable. My brothers really needed that attention, and it struck me as unfair that I should get the attention instead. I felt guilty for this, but also the pressure of having to live up to this increased expectation. At a very young age, it was made clear to me by both of my parents that 'smart' is the thing I would need to be in order to be loved and praised. In their defense, I don't believe that they realized they were sending this message, but it was the pattern which emerged. They would brag to their friends about my high standardized testing scores. It was clear that the only thing I could offer them was to always be smarter than the next kid. It was a status I defended the way a slave in a pit might defend food from the dogs. Being the smartest was survival. The positive side of this was that I was naturally equipped to be inherently more intelligent than other children. The scope of my vocabulary was often surprising to adults, and I had a natural drive for knowledge which placed me well ahead of my peers.
It didn't matter if I was, in fact, the smartest - only that I was overtly intelligent in a way that would cause people to assume I knew what I was talking about. I learned to appear intelligent. It was the first of many things I would learn to pretend to be. Not that it was entirely an act. I had prodigious capacity for learning. But I think that capacity was driven, perhaps, by the pride my parents showed in me as I achieved more in school. There was very little which they possessed for which they might experience pride. Love being a limited commodity, I would need to be on my A game at all times.
The downside of accruing knowledge before humility is the tendency to become an insufferable know-it-all. A trait that precisely no one likes in young children. I was never well liked by my peers. It didn't help that even as a very young child I was given to a saturnine bearing. I was never a happy child, and I learned young that I would never get anything I wanted, no matter how minor. In fact, expressing wants was largely discouraged in my home, aside from requests to be fed and watered.
The answer was always no.
If this paints an unkind picture of my parents, understand that we were very poor.
The first home I have any recollection of spending any real time in was in a housing project in Seattle called Rainier Vista. In 2008, Rainier Valley accounted for nearly a quarter of the homicides in Seattle, but back in 1980, it was a legitimately scary place.
Not that I realized it at the time. As it was a ghetto, we were surrounded by black people. But to us, this was normal. Most of my friends in school were black, because I was one of very few white children going to that school.
I was too young to see the drugs, but the alcoholism was rampant. One of my earliest memories is reading the word OLYMPIA off a can of beer. I remember this because I had trouble with the "It's the Water", because it had been written in script on the can.
Cut me some slack, I was 3.
Looking back, it's hilarious to think of how very white I was. I was raised in the LDS church which is already whiter than alabaster milktoast in Wyoming in the winter. But I was also a bookish sort of kid who enjoyed throwing around my dictionary words.
We had cats. Gory (short for mandragore) and Trilandria. They had kittens. Of all of those kittens I only remember Mandru. He was with us the shortest time. At 6 months he was put down for feline leukemia. It was a difficult time for me, because he was the only cat who would be nice to me.
My first brother was born that summer. I remember being at my maternal grandmother's home waiting for mother to come home with Leonard. In the mind of a 3.5 year old, I was going to have someone to play with. I didn't really understand the concept of infancy -- which is kind of funny when you consider how recently I had myself been an infant.
My maternal grandmother and her husband -- We'll call them Linda and Gene -- were a bit of work. Mount St Helens erupted on their anniversary, which is effectively the least violent explosion ever to happen on their anniversary. They were abusive and terrible people. My grandmother once broke a cast iron fireplace poker over my mother's back. On another occasion she threw a dinner glass at my mother's face which shattered, leaving glass permanently embedded in her face right next to her eye. They were angry about everything and they swore at everything. Looking back, it's all kind of lyrical. I remember my grandmother yelling -- on a daily basis -- "SOOOOOOON OF A BITCH! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON OF A BITCH!"
I know you don't hear in your head what I hear in describing it, but imagine that it was loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear it. Because that's how loud it was. It didn't take an advanced intellect to determine that the best place to be was out of sight, so I spent most of my time engaged in away activities. watching television downstairs in the split level, or wandering around outside. I became a master of laying low and avoiding attention.
No child, and few adults possessed the constitution to withstand being the target of this yelling, and it was genuinely terrifying. These were people fueled by hate. Gene remains the archetype for evil in my mind. I think I may only have ever seen him smile as an act of cruelty or mockery.
My real maternal grandfather killed himself before I was born, and I'm sure that had a tremendous impact on my mother. But nothing like the constant physical, psychological, verbal, and emotional abuse that she experienced at the hands of my grandmother and her husband. For every negative thing I will say about my mother, it is to her greatest credit that she did not revisit this violence on us kids. Few are able to break that cycle so abruptly.
My grandmother's house was decorated with the things one collected in the '70s when they wanted to show everyone else that they were walking with the LORD. A florid and baroquely framed "footsteps" poster, and a cast metal prayer hands sculpture. A painting of waves, and a painting with the rays of light peering through the clouds like streamers from heaven. On Sundays Linda would watch Jimmy Swaggart or some other high end television huckster. She was the just the kind of simpleminded believer who lived in a world where Power Hour miracles are a real thing. The sort of person a travelling jesus revival con man would look for.
She was a true believer.
Which is what makes it amazing to me: If you truly believed in Jesus, and believed in the teachings of the bible -- if you believed that he was watching you at all times -- How could you possible go through life with such a hateful demeanor? She knew the fury of god, yes. But she knew nothing of compassion, or mercy, or kindness. She knew nothing of the love in one's heart for their neighbor.
I believe that she was the sort of person who was so busy in trying to prove to god that she is on his side that she forgot to learn any of the lessons that went with the story. The sort of person who would have stepped on a beggar and knocked a pregnant woman out of her way to press to the front of the crowd and ask Jesus how she might serve him. It's not that she was a big bible thumper. She simply wore those beliefs on the occasion it would be seen. She was a Wal-Mart American before there was such a thing as Wal-Mart.
My mother had always hoped to win her mother's love. And in her way, my grandmother did love my mother. There was frequently tension between my grandmother and her husband because of the money she would spend on clothes or groceries for us kids. Every dollar was a leash that meant my mother would have to sit quietly and endure the beratement that went with it. It was the best our mother could do to make sure we had shoes, and coats.
And we never once went without shoes, or coats.
The day my brother was born marked the end of my first extended stay with my maternal grandmother.
My father is a genius, and an artist; A natural with computers and structured logic in a time when it was far less common than it is now. He is brilliant as a musician and as a conversationalist. As is so often the case, such gifts come at a price. My father is also a lazy man with no ambition. It was almost as if he was afraid to achieve his potential. Worst of all, it was never in his heart to pay attention to his children. As the eldest, I did receive more than my fair share of what little attention he doled out. That said, if I never make the effort to contact my father, I will never see or hear from him again. Being the favorite simply means that he is less resistant to spending time with me when I do call. Lest you think I am exaggerating, I have seen my father exactly 3 times since the age of 21. In each instance, I initiated that contact. I am nearly 40 now.
I spent a good portion of my life assuming that it was incumbent upon me to become sufficiently noteworthy. I followed science and computers and delved into music in a big way. In many ways I became my father, or my perception of him. The last time I saw him, despite having not talked with him in over 10 years, I saw that he had purchased the exact same computer components and built the exact same computer that I built. This isn't some prebuilt deal, but a built from scratch custom computer. Our components were nearly identical. Even after years of not seeing my father, I am so closely connected with his value system and his way of thinking that I come to the same conclusions an uncanny percentage of the time.
It worries me how closely I mirror his thought patterns, because I do not want to be this person.
Once I was old enough to understand that treatment was unequal between my brothers and I, it made me feel uncomfortable. My brothers really needed that attention, and it struck me as unfair that I should get the attention instead. I felt guilty for this, but also the pressure of having to live up to this increased expectation. At a very young age, it was made clear to me by both of my parents that 'smart' is the thing I would need to be in order to be loved and praised. In their defense, I don't believe that they realized they were sending this message, but it was the pattern which emerged. They would brag to their friends about my high standardized testing scores. It was clear that the only thing I could offer them was to always be smarter than the next kid. It was a status I defended the way a slave in a pit might defend food from the dogs. Being the smartest was survival. The positive side of this was that I was naturally equipped to be inherently more intelligent than other children. The scope of my vocabulary was often surprising to adults, and I had a natural drive for knowledge which placed me well ahead of my peers.
It didn't matter if I was, in fact, the smartest - only that I was overtly intelligent in a way that would cause people to assume I knew what I was talking about. I learned to appear intelligent. It was the first of many things I would learn to pretend to be. Not that it was entirely an act. I had prodigious capacity for learning. But I think that capacity was driven, perhaps, by the pride my parents showed in me as I achieved more in school. There was very little which they possessed for which they might experience pride. Love being a limited commodity, I would need to be on my A game at all times.
The downside of accruing knowledge before humility is the tendency to become an insufferable know-it-all. A trait that precisely no one likes in young children. I was never well liked by my peers. It didn't help that even as a very young child I was given to a saturnine bearing. I was never a happy child, and I learned young that I would never get anything I wanted, no matter how minor. In fact, expressing wants was largely discouraged in my home, aside from requests to be fed and watered.
The answer was always no.
If this paints an unkind picture of my parents, understand that we were very poor.
The first home I have any recollection of spending any real time in was in a housing project in Seattle called Rainier Vista. In 2008, Rainier Valley accounted for nearly a quarter of the homicides in Seattle, but back in 1980, it was a legitimately scary place.
Seattle: even our ghettos are picturesque.
Not that I realized it at the time. As it was a ghetto, we were surrounded by black people. But to us, this was normal. Most of my friends in school were black, because I was one of very few white children going to that school.
I was too young to see the drugs, but the alcoholism was rampant. One of my earliest memories is reading the word OLYMPIA off a can of beer. I remember this because I had trouble with the "It's the Water", because it had been written in script on the can.
Cut me some slack, I was 3.
Looking back, it's hilarious to think of how very white I was. I was raised in the LDS church which is already whiter than alabaster milktoast in Wyoming in the winter. But I was also a bookish sort of kid who enjoyed throwing around my dictionary words.
We had cats. Gory (short for mandragore) and Trilandria. They had kittens. Of all of those kittens I only remember Mandru. He was with us the shortest time. At 6 months he was put down for feline leukemia. It was a difficult time for me, because he was the only cat who would be nice to me.
My first brother was born that summer. I remember being at my maternal grandmother's home waiting for mother to come home with Leonard. In the mind of a 3.5 year old, I was going to have someone to play with. I didn't really understand the concept of infancy -- which is kind of funny when you consider how recently I had myself been an infant.
My maternal grandmother and her husband -- We'll call them Linda and Gene -- were a bit of work. Mount St Helens erupted on their anniversary, which is effectively the least violent explosion ever to happen on their anniversary. They were abusive and terrible people. My grandmother once broke a cast iron fireplace poker over my mother's back. On another occasion she threw a dinner glass at my mother's face which shattered, leaving glass permanently embedded in her face right next to her eye. They were angry about everything and they swore at everything. Looking back, it's all kind of lyrical. I remember my grandmother yelling -- on a daily basis -- "SOOOOOOON OF A BITCH! SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON OF A BITCH!"
I know you don't hear in your head what I hear in describing it, but imagine that it was loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear it. Because that's how loud it was. It didn't take an advanced intellect to determine that the best place to be was out of sight, so I spent most of my time engaged in away activities. watching television downstairs in the split level, or wandering around outside. I became a master of laying low and avoiding attention.
No child, and few adults possessed the constitution to withstand being the target of this yelling, and it was genuinely terrifying. These were people fueled by hate. Gene remains the archetype for evil in my mind. I think I may only have ever seen him smile as an act of cruelty or mockery.
My real maternal grandfather killed himself before I was born, and I'm sure that had a tremendous impact on my mother. But nothing like the constant physical, psychological, verbal, and emotional abuse that she experienced at the hands of my grandmother and her husband. For every negative thing I will say about my mother, it is to her greatest credit that she did not revisit this violence on us kids. Few are able to break that cycle so abruptly.
My grandmother's house was decorated with the things one collected in the '70s when they wanted to show everyone else that they were walking with the LORD. A florid and baroquely framed "footsteps" poster, and a cast metal prayer hands sculpture. A painting of waves, and a painting with the rays of light peering through the clouds like streamers from heaven. On Sundays Linda would watch Jimmy Swaggart or some other high end television huckster. She was the just the kind of simpleminded believer who lived in a world where Power Hour miracles are a real thing. The sort of person a travelling jesus revival con man would look for.
She was a true believer.
Which is what makes it amazing to me: If you truly believed in Jesus, and believed in the teachings of the bible -- if you believed that he was watching you at all times -- How could you possible go through life with such a hateful demeanor? She knew the fury of god, yes. But she knew nothing of compassion, or mercy, or kindness. She knew nothing of the love in one's heart for their neighbor.
I believe that she was the sort of person who was so busy in trying to prove to god that she is on his side that she forgot to learn any of the lessons that went with the story. The sort of person who would have stepped on a beggar and knocked a pregnant woman out of her way to press to the front of the crowd and ask Jesus how she might serve him. It's not that she was a big bible thumper. She simply wore those beliefs on the occasion it would be seen. She was a Wal-Mart American before there was such a thing as Wal-Mart.
My mother had always hoped to win her mother's love. And in her way, my grandmother did love my mother. There was frequently tension between my grandmother and her husband because of the money she would spend on clothes or groceries for us kids. Every dollar was a leash that meant my mother would have to sit quietly and endure the beratement that went with it. It was the best our mother could do to make sure we had shoes, and coats.
And we never once went without shoes, or coats.
The day my brother was born marked the end of my first extended stay with my maternal grandmother.
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