OMG! I have never thought of this. OMG!
Maybe you’re adopted?
She hated me?
I’m pretty sure that no one in my biological father’s family knows that I exist. I suppose his wife must know, as I’m on his health insurance, but beyond that, who knows. He was my mom’s high school boyfriend; she got pregnant at 20 and he has had nothing to do with me. He’s always paid his child support and everything. I never thought about his family knowing about me until my grandma made a comment one day about how even if he wanted nothing to do with me, if her son had done the same thing, as a grandparent, she would have had to at least want to see her grandchild once, even if she didn’t pursue a relationship. Don’t ask me how this came up, as we never talk about my dad (not in an “its a secret” way, but I’ve never met him, so he’s not a big topic of discussion). I had never thought about it before, and now I wonder sometimes.
I know why my mom has always resented me: I have a penis. In her reckoning, if it is equipped with a dick, it is by it’s very nature an evil thing. Even if a guy does something nice, she quickly finds a way to ascribe a sleazy ulterior motive.
What I suspect is why she hates everything male. I have heard hints that granddad or another older male relative molested her. But if there’s one thing she hates more than macho men, it’s very beautiful women. She seems to think of them as class-traitors.
I also suspect that she had something going on with the girl next door. She may not realize that I knew she’d been in my porn stash, but as a teen, I had a sizable collection of ladies-only imagery, so I know she wasn’t checking out any couples’ action.
I was raised Jewish (Reform), and we were one of the very few families in an otherwise Christian neighborhood. My parents decided that, although we celebrated Hannukah, we would also have a Christmas tree, with all the decorations and presents. The early trees were as tall as the ceiling, but every year the tree got smaller, until finally when I was 12, we just had a little one, and none after that.
I remember helping to decorate the tree. I remember where the decorations were kept the rest of the year. I remember stringing cranberries and popcorn. And I remember one year, we made gingerbread men and hung them on the tree, only to discover the next morning, that the dog had eaten all of them from the lower branches. And I remember removing the decorations and dragging the tree out to the curb.
But . . . nobody else in my family remembers that we ever had a Christmas tree. They just totally deny it, and accuse me of making up the whole thing. To my dying day, I will always remember the trees we had, and my absolutely true memories of them.
Wow, and we give Sampiro all the credit for wacky family history.
I know for a fact that my grandmother switched me and all the other lefty grandchlldren over to righties. I don’t remember it because it was done very early on, but she’s told us about it.
Everyone in my family claims to be from a mainstream religion, but if someone gets in trouble, they’ll be given a satchel of stuff to clip to their clothing, or some words to chant. Clearly some of these people are still practicing some sort of folk religion on the side.
There’s reason to believe that my half sibling might really be my cousin. People can resemble their aunts and uncles, but this is a bit much combined with some of the other factors.
That ‘folk religion’ sounds strangely like my family’s ‘Catholicism’.
I have a sinking suspicion that I was adopted. After all, my elder brother was. They didn’t tell him until he was 11, and they never told me (I had to find out from a friend of the family). By the time I was 11, he was 17 and pretty well a screw-up. Maybe they decided it’d be better never to tell me . . .
My mother has talked about how difficult her pregnancy with me was, and how she had to have a caesarian section, and stuff like that, but she’s already flip-flopped on one aspect of the story (she claimed when I was younger that she quit smoking for the whole duration and it was agonizingly difficult, but recently she admitted that she still smoked while pregnant).
On the other hand, I do look a lot like my mother’s family, so maybe my mom just got with the pool guy one day. But I could never ask these questions. Since my brother killed himself, it’s been impossible for us to talk about anything personal in my family.
Nothing earth-shattering, but I have an innocuous childhood memory that mystifies my parents. I insist it’s an actual memory, they say they remember no such thing ever happening.
It basically consists of my father playing cricket in what seems like an informal event, possibly a picnic gathering of work colleagues - and me running across the pitch to give him something, and being told off for interrupting the game. I would have been 3 or 4.
Not my own, but from friends (or friend’s friends):
A friend of mine suspects, from offhand remarks from his grandmother, that his father has been involved in a caraccident where someone died.
Another friend went in for a medical checkup when she was fourteen. She had a boyfriend at the time, but as they weren’t doing anything dangerous, just rubbing genitals, :rolleyes: she hadn’t worried that she had missed her period. Or missed it twice, she was a bit vague about her periods anyway, and they wre iregular to boot. Anyway, the doctor did some medical things down there, it hurt like a bitch, and the next day she had an exceptionally heavy period.
Did the doctor perform an abortion and thought it best not to burden the clueless fourteen year old with the conscious choice? She still doesn’t know.
My guess would be incest.
As for speech therapy: I received it in second grade, as did one classmate, Jim. Jim and I were generally recognized as the two smartest kids in the class, and I suspect that the assignment was designed to both keep us from being too cocky about our intelligence and to make our fellow students feel better about themselves. I did hiss my sibilants, and Jim did pronounce “r” as if it were “w”, but there were other students in the class who could have benefited as much – or more – from speech therapy as we did.
Well, no one said anything about a murder conviction. If he did kill someone, and was never charged, that would explain his apparent fear of the topic, as opposed to shame or embarassment.
I think there’s such a thing as an “invented” memory. I, too, have a very clear memory of being on the beach, in cold, windy weather, and building a sand castle with a paper cup and a little plastic bucket. I wanted some water, and my brother wouldn’t get it for me, so I went to scoop some from the ocean, got hit with a big wave and almost got dragged out with it. I remember digging my fingers in the sand when the wave was dragging at me, and feeling like they got cut or abraded. I remember crying and shivering and being wrapped in a towel, and I even remember what shirt I was wearing that day.
My sister says she remembers it too, but my parents think we’re both nuts. I imagine something extremely minor actually happened and somehow my adult brain brings back a big, traumatic event.
I have one of those questionable memories. My dad throws my mom across my bedroom. She collides with my dollhouse and it breaks. I can’t be positive, though. I asked my mom once, and she said it could have happened, but if it did, she’s blocked it out. It may be true, or it may have been an amalgamation of many nasty but less severe things that happened.
At the end of first grade, my mother decided to get large Jules Verne books for me from the library - which I could read. I suspect there were discussions with teachers, but I don’t know. She’s gone, and I asked my father, but he’s past the point of remembering.
A better case is from my wife’s best friend. Just before she went to college, she was told that her father had been married before, and that she had half sisters. There was a plaque at the college with their names on it, and her parents were worried she wonder about it. This was obviously quite a shock.
That my mother used to prepare and smoke marijuana in front of me. I have distinct memories of somebody doing so in front of me, so much so that I experienced nostalgia the first time I smelled marijuana in my adolescence (I especially remember the preparations of the joints, specifically the rolling and licking, as well as her preferred brand of paper (TOP)). My mother insists that it wasn’t her, that it must have been “the babysitter”. In fact I don’t think my mother ever employed babysitters - I stayed with grandmas and aunts.
A cousin who was old enough to be cognizant during that period once referred to my mother’s pot-smoking days in a quick, throw-away line. Also, I once told her, in front of my mother, about the babysitter who smoked in front of me. In a faux (but convincing) innocent way she asked questions in an attempt to poke holes in the babysitter story, until I gave up and admitted that I thought it was my mother, but she insisted otherwise. My mother sighed and my cousin laughed triumphantly.
The evidence is clear, I guess, but the only doubt comes from my mother’s unwavering insistence that I’m mistaken and my deeply held desire to believe her.
I found out while getting things boxed up to move my mum down here that I’d been tested for several learning disabilities as I could do everything but math. To this day, I’m STILL bad at math.
Also found out that my 1st grade teacher suspected I’d been molested and after reading the reports she sent home and also finding some other paperwork well hidden away, all my years of suspecting I’d been molested were finally true. There was this family of really weird people who rented a house on my grandparent’s farm and I can remember my parents showing up on their doorstep one day when I was playing with their kids, both mum and dad out for blood. The cops showed up and they vanished. Brrrrr.
Both my parents worked ever since I was an infant, so I was left with my grandma when I was a baby, and later, when she came to the States (I was 18 months old), I had a series of female caregivers. I suspect one of these “ladies” (I use the term loosely) may have physically abused me. I distinctly remember being 3 and getting a spanking from someone other than my parents for playing with some water from a bucket that was going to be used for laundry or cleaning or something other than playing. I may have also been severely punished for breaking a china plate or cup. I told my mom about this a couple of years ago, and she suspects one babysitter in particular. To this day, I get inordinately worried when I accidentally break a plate, as if someone’s going to yell at me or something. One time, at RenFair, my friend and I visited a booth in which you threw cheap ceramic plates at a target. It was quite a catharsis for me.
I’ve always suspected that my mother’s youngest brother is actually my half brother. My grandparents had ten kids then waited six or seven years and wound up with four more. Their oldest four daughters (my mother included) were old enough to have had the four youngest. In fact, my mother’s oldest sister began her family around the same time. To top it off, he and my youngest sister resemble one another very closely…even more so than his own children.
When I was young I remember visiting my sister’s godparents a couple states away… Twice… Though VERY vaguely the first time (she must’ve been 1, me maybe just turned 4 at the most). Two years or so later my parents dropped us off for the weekend (don’t want to know what they did for that weekend) and after that visit I never saw them again. The only reason I remember the two trips were different was because one visit they had chickens in their back yard and another time they didn’t.
The second time my sister (who must’ve been 3, 4 max) told my parents something about what my sister’s godparents son did to her… I’m pretty sure he was kissing her. I vaguely remember my parents screaming at them on the phone… Nothing else.
Just about three years ago (a good 16 or 17 years after this happened) my dad said he’d contacted them just to see what was up (I have no idea why or whatever, I do remember his parents being awesome… and the most I remember of him is playing duck hunt for nintento and him getting on a school bus, a novel concept for me at the age of 5 or so). He said the son (I don’t even remember his name) had recently had a divorce.
Anyway… though my memory may have been tainted by the parental talk I vaguely remember hearing… I suspect I may have seen it. My sister’s godparents kid kissing my 3 year old sister. From their bathroom. I remember the floor plan, lighting, and furniture placement exactly… Though the only part that doesn’t make sense to me is that I thought the couch was over all the way to one wall instead of four or five feet the other way. That’s the one thing that makes me wonder, I know that couch was not in the place I remember it being.
Then again… maybe if it was a fake memory I shouldn’t be able to remember it so vividly at age 5 or 6. Then again, fake memory, my sister saying he hugged him goodbye in 3 year old talk turns into him molesting her (I think he was 8 or 9 then)… I just don’t know.
I’ll never know… but sadly its one of the first several memories of my life.