# I'm different now. Just saying. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2011, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-different-now-just-saying/602108 "2011-11-06T22:48:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 116
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2011, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-different-now-just-saying/602108/116 "2011-11-11T15:24:19Z")
> [@OpalCat](#): > > I have childhood issues regarding sports. I was raised by a single mother who put sports above me as a child. I was made to crawl across the floor to get things on the other side of the room rather than walk between her and her precious game, made to wait hours before being allowed to ask a question, etc. My God, this brings back memories. My parents were a similar kind of sadist. I was forced to crawl on the floor as a young child, sometimes almost completely naked, with only a humiliating strip of cloth to catch my own excrement. Months passed before I realized I could walk— something I taught _myself_, with no help from my mother or father. They were too busy talking to each other using really long words they knew I wouldn’t understand. All the times when I _wasn’t_ the complete center of attention—sometimes for minutes on end— are still fresh in my mind. You don’t just heal from that kind of abuse. They used to eat peanut brittle right in _front_ of me— before I had _teeth_. Do you know what that does to a toddler who’s just coming to realize that the world revolves around him? And we didn’t have LiveJournal back then. If you had an existential crisis to journal about, you had to spell it out with ABC blocks for an audience of stuffed animals and Tonka trucks. Do you know how cold it feels to have an audience of teddy bears sitting there in silence, judging you with their dead eyes? --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-different-now-just-saying/602108)._