Human Tricks or Humane Treatment

How Mom saved me from adversity... or something...

I learned to crawl The Wrong Way.

Mom giggled on the phone with her Very Important Normal Friends about the way my knees wouldn’t bend when I crawled, and how I carried my diapered butt high in the air while walking on hands and feet. Stiff limbs, full of concentration. Like a Spider, she’d say.

“I should take a picture, so she’ll remember how funny this is. Maybe I’ll show it to her Future Boyfriends.”

Mom thought I was so cute with my quirks. So cute until I stopped talking, crawling, walking, eating, and developing altogether. My second infancy. Was it another quirk? A temporary sickness? A horrible, life-threatening disease? Was it caused by The Vaccines?

No big deal, Mom saved the day. I had Asthma and Bad Eyesight. She had to shop around, but she finally found me the Right Doctors. It didn’t feel right at first to give a toddler a rescue inhaler, a blaring machine weighing about as much as she did, and glasses so small they were comical, she’d lament. But I was fixed at last. I was Normal Again, and the mundanity could resume.

I learned to gain attention doing tricks for my bullies, as long as I didn’t tell our mom when I got hurt trying to make them laugh. I was so clumsy and stretchy like a rubberband. The bruises were no big deal as long as I got a laugh.

But don’t ask me to perform on cue, because my throat will close up, my face will sweat, and my ears will hear painful bells. I’ll want to run away, but my feet get stuck. I’ll question what would ever possess me to want attention when the cost is so high.

One of the Aunts came to visit once, forgetting I wasn’t a mindless lump in a stroller anymore, not for at least a year or two. She talked about me like I couldn’t hear her from across the room. Mom bragged loudly about my talents and tricks, but whispered about my weaknesses. Only a few Certain People were allowed to know when everything wasn’t perfect.

My aunt approached me like she would a pet. She used a specific voice I’d heard on the insipid TV shows I was told to like simply because they were Age-Appropriate. Her fake voice was so saccharine that my ears revolted and my politeness left my body. My mind scrambled to find a shield against such social torment.

Without looking up from the floor, my preschool-aged mouth spoke a so-called “chilling phrase” I would be reminded of for the rest of my life. After my name escaped my aunt’s mouth covered in syrup, I replied, “She’s not here right now. I’m Jack.”

This was the first time I became my own advocate, and how “Jack” became a nickname for the part of me that is Too Honest and Rough Around the Edges.

I wonder what will happen when the world realizes that Jack is The Real Me and The Other is just The Mask?