five year old follies
I walked into the cloakroom, standing a distance away from the others. Taking my time to arrange my school bag into my arms. Slowly wrapping it around my back, I stepped towards the teacher with a large grin on my face. "Miss, what's going on?" I asked perpelexed but curious. I was like that, always positively ponderous. She told me that we were doing a bag check because someone had reported a smoke smell coming out of the cloak rooms. In my mind, something told me that I would be involved, because things like this always happened.
Being so young though, it was unconscious, so I happily passed my bag on. I remember the innocent smile fading from my face when Mrs. Vernon pulled out the matches from my bag. They were matches I had never seen before. They were matches which were deliberately lit, and planted in my bag in order to frame me. People suck don't they?
Especially when you're five years old.
I remember my first year of primary school. I hated it. I was a pretty introverted child, and I didn't speak much, or pay attention to any of the classroom activities. That meant at the end of the day I had no friends, and when you have no friends, you have enemies. Those other five-year old enemies have no idea how vividly i remember some of the things, albiet, stupid, they put me through at such a young age. It is curious to consider how I viewed the world as a child has shaped who I am today... or has it?
"Morgan. Not again. You always do something wrong. Why are there matches in your bag? Don't try to deny it, because we've found them," were some of the words that came out of the teachers mouth as my smile began to deteriorate and my five-year-old logic cracked. At that age I couldn't comprehend why the matches had gotten there, and the reasons I was being blamed. I felt like an alien, and it was shocking to me because being framed & blamed at school was a complete antithesis to my home life. Where at home I would be treated with care and loving, at school it was almost the opposite.
That day I sat in the cloakroom crying for hours as the teacher told me I wouldn't be allowed to go home until I admitted to taking the matches and burning them. I remember that time being the lonest i'd ever felt. My surroundings are dark and foreboding, in retrospect I felt like a criminal in a police cell being blackmailed into admitting something I didn't do. I felt like I was being brainwashed by someone of authority into deciding that I should take the blame- because, nobody else would.
Any normal five year old would have just gone along with it. But for some reason I chose not to. Somewhere in the little thought process that was growing inside me, I decided that I would stand up for myself and continue to deny doing something I knew I would have never done. I stuck to my convictions against somebody probably ten times older than I was, on my third week of primary school. It wasn't until my Grandad came to pick me up that him and the teacher had a yelling match in front of me. As a Grandad, he had my back, he knew I wouldn't lie, because we're family. I've never lied to him.
Anybody who has read thus far is probably wondering why I am posting a blog about something that happened 14 years ago. To be honest there are three reasons. The first is that I like to write about my past from the present. There is nothing more amazing then going back and remembering how things were, especially when life gets more beautiful, like it has for me. Second, I had a dream about this event last night, and I've had them recurring my entire life, writing them down will hopefully get rid of them. Third, even though I am entirely confident and happy, I am still trying to understand myself. Did you know that our personalities are shaped by the first 6 years of our lives? Let me elaborate
I am a liberal
I stand up for myself
I am weary of authority
I'm not intimidated by power
I believe in the power of family
I believe in truth
My self esteem levels never stay in the same place
I can get confused easily
I don't like being blamed or accused
Where do these seemingly normal values come from? One thing that makes me wonder is how that one little event (of many,) affected how I saw the world as a child, and how those feelings I gained changed how I interacted with the world around me as I grew up. I've always been scared of dark places, since I can remember. And until I came out of the closet, I was afraid of being extroverted. Both of these fears came from my struggle as a child to make sense of why I was living with my grandmother, why I was "different" and why people just seemed to hate me.
Have a think to some really poigant times in your childhood. Our memories allow us to remember very tragic or very happy times. I guarantee you there will be an event or a series of events that lead back to some of the things you say or do now, or some of your irrational fears and thoughts, but also open up one hard question.
If some of the things that happened in our childhoods really do play important roles in determining how we behave as adults, then how are we to change them if they are damaging? The fact that I am jaded and paranoid of power, but also not threatened of it at the same time, is bad. I get myself in trouble constantly for breaking social and employment rules every few weeks, and each time I apologize I seem to do something worse next time. It's not that i'm forsefully being wreckless with my friends and career, it's just the way I am. But I think there is a way to change that.
Take your past. Put it into a smoothie. Throw the smoothie into the future, and then imagine where it will end up.
Do I want to be paranoid of any blame placed on me in ten years time? Do I want to sabotage my work and family life when i'm 25 because of the way I have been shaped as a child? Do you? I know that childhood plays a huge role in it because I have two special friends who i've known since we were little and all three of us have been though different things and turned out to be completely different people. But there are little things I see in them that remind me of what they were like, or events which changed them. Forever. I am the same, and so are you.
What I learned as a youngster from this all, is that those in power aren't always right. They are actually more often wrong then they are right. That teacher didn't actually know that it was me who did that. She didn't bother to consider the variables, or use any type of lateral thinking. She just used her position of authority to take out a little guy, because that's what the process ordered her to do. Twelve years later when I studied the novel "one flew over the cuckoos nest" about conformity verses individualism, it's no wonder all of my essays about power verses liberation were all excellences. My experiences with both this, and with coming out of the closet make me individualistic. It also made my relationship with my Grandmother strained when I was reaching ages that I felt I could provide and make decisions for myself when she decided control was still in her hands. A power struggle ensued.
I hope in writing this down I can erase that memory which still actually affects me. Somewhere in the neurons of my brain, remembering how marginalized I was back then strikes a chord. Sometimes, when i'm being talked down to, or told off, or treated like shit because of who I am outside my control- a sudden sheild flies out of nowhere and I couldn't really do much to control it. I wanna change though. Sheilds are bad. They keep the bad out, but they also keep the good out.
We all want to change. Otherwise we would stay at the same job, doing the same thing each day. We wouldn't seek new friends, forge new relationships or gather new experiences to invest our time in if we weren't compelled to change ourselves. The way I see it, the only way to change is to stop thinking "I wish people would stop berating me about my past and let me do better in my future", and instead to think "I wish I could forget, and stop berating myself over my past."
...just another late night blog by Morgan. I don't even know why you guys read these, by the way. I write them for myself more than for attention. It is fun putting little narratives out there, especially these days when I am not in uni. I feel a bit dumb. This is an off-set to that. Anyway, ciao, and have a good night and a good year. You deserve it
Being so young though, it was unconscious, so I happily passed my bag on. I remember the innocent smile fading from my face when Mrs. Vernon pulled out the matches from my bag. They were matches I had never seen before. They were matches which were deliberately lit, and planted in my bag in order to frame me. People suck don't they?
Especially when you're five years old.
I remember my first year of primary school. I hated it. I was a pretty introverted child, and I didn't speak much, or pay attention to any of the classroom activities. That meant at the end of the day I had no friends, and when you have no friends, you have enemies. Those other five-year old enemies have no idea how vividly i remember some of the things, albiet, stupid, they put me through at such a young age. It is curious to consider how I viewed the world as a child has shaped who I am today... or has it?
"Morgan. Not again. You always do something wrong. Why are there matches in your bag? Don't try to deny it, because we've found them," were some of the words that came out of the teachers mouth as my smile began to deteriorate and my five-year-old logic cracked. At that age I couldn't comprehend why the matches had gotten there, and the reasons I was being blamed. I felt like an alien, and it was shocking to me because being framed & blamed at school was a complete antithesis to my home life. Where at home I would be treated with care and loving, at school it was almost the opposite.
That day I sat in the cloakroom crying for hours as the teacher told me I wouldn't be allowed to go home until I admitted to taking the matches and burning them. I remember that time being the lonest i'd ever felt. My surroundings are dark and foreboding, in retrospect I felt like a criminal in a police cell being blackmailed into admitting something I didn't do. I felt like I was being brainwashed by someone of authority into deciding that I should take the blame- because, nobody else would.
Any normal five year old would have just gone along with it. But for some reason I chose not to. Somewhere in the little thought process that was growing inside me, I decided that I would stand up for myself and continue to deny doing something I knew I would have never done. I stuck to my convictions against somebody probably ten times older than I was, on my third week of primary school. It wasn't until my Grandad came to pick me up that him and the teacher had a yelling match in front of me. As a Grandad, he had my back, he knew I wouldn't lie, because we're family. I've never lied to him.
Anybody who has read thus far is probably wondering why I am posting a blog about something that happened 14 years ago. To be honest there are three reasons. The first is that I like to write about my past from the present. There is nothing more amazing then going back and remembering how things were, especially when life gets more beautiful, like it has for me. Second, I had a dream about this event last night, and I've had them recurring my entire life, writing them down will hopefully get rid of them. Third, even though I am entirely confident and happy, I am still trying to understand myself. Did you know that our personalities are shaped by the first 6 years of our lives? Let me elaborate
I am a liberal
I stand up for myself
I am weary of authority
I'm not intimidated by power
I believe in the power of family
I believe in truth
My self esteem levels never stay in the same place
I can get confused easily
I don't like being blamed or accused
Where do these seemingly normal values come from? One thing that makes me wonder is how that one little event (of many,) affected how I saw the world as a child, and how those feelings I gained changed how I interacted with the world around me as I grew up. I've always been scared of dark places, since I can remember. And until I came out of the closet, I was afraid of being extroverted. Both of these fears came from my struggle as a child to make sense of why I was living with my grandmother, why I was "different" and why people just seemed to hate me.
Have a think to some really poigant times in your childhood. Our memories allow us to remember very tragic or very happy times. I guarantee you there will be an event or a series of events that lead back to some of the things you say or do now, or some of your irrational fears and thoughts, but also open up one hard question.
If some of the things that happened in our childhoods really do play important roles in determining how we behave as adults, then how are we to change them if they are damaging? The fact that I am jaded and paranoid of power, but also not threatened of it at the same time, is bad. I get myself in trouble constantly for breaking social and employment rules every few weeks, and each time I apologize I seem to do something worse next time. It's not that i'm forsefully being wreckless with my friends and career, it's just the way I am. But I think there is a way to change that.
Take your past. Put it into a smoothie. Throw the smoothie into the future, and then imagine where it will end up.
Do I want to be paranoid of any blame placed on me in ten years time? Do I want to sabotage my work and family life when i'm 25 because of the way I have been shaped as a child? Do you? I know that childhood plays a huge role in it because I have two special friends who i've known since we were little and all three of us have been though different things and turned out to be completely different people. But there are little things I see in them that remind me of what they were like, or events which changed them. Forever. I am the same, and so are you.
What I learned as a youngster from this all, is that those in power aren't always right. They are actually more often wrong then they are right. That teacher didn't actually know that it was me who did that. She didn't bother to consider the variables, or use any type of lateral thinking. She just used her position of authority to take out a little guy, because that's what the process ordered her to do. Twelve years later when I studied the novel "one flew over the cuckoos nest" about conformity verses individualism, it's no wonder all of my essays about power verses liberation were all excellences. My experiences with both this, and with coming out of the closet make me individualistic. It also made my relationship with my Grandmother strained when I was reaching ages that I felt I could provide and make decisions for myself when she decided control was still in her hands. A power struggle ensued.
I hope in writing this down I can erase that memory which still actually affects me. Somewhere in the neurons of my brain, remembering how marginalized I was back then strikes a chord. Sometimes, when i'm being talked down to, or told off, or treated like shit because of who I am outside my control- a sudden sheild flies out of nowhere and I couldn't really do much to control it. I wanna change though. Sheilds are bad. They keep the bad out, but they also keep the good out.
We all want to change. Otherwise we would stay at the same job, doing the same thing each day. We wouldn't seek new friends, forge new relationships or gather new experiences to invest our time in if we weren't compelled to change ourselves. The way I see it, the only way to change is to stop thinking "I wish people would stop berating me about my past and let me do better in my future", and instead to think "I wish I could forget, and stop berating myself over my past."
...just another late night blog by Morgan. I don't even know why you guys read these, by the way. I write them for myself more than for attention. It is fun putting little narratives out there, especially these days when I am not in uni. I feel a bit dumb. This is an off-set to that. Anyway, ciao, and have a good night and a good year. You deserve it
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