December, 1991--Trying to Remember

Camille:	Do you ever remember seeing your mother, your father beating up your mother?
Bob:	No.
Camille:	Sheesh! Not even once? Oh let’s try to remember one for him.
Bob:	ahahahaha oh God
Deedee:	Try to remember one
Camille:	I can’t even remember one!
Deedee:	Oh I can’t remember a specific, all I remember is seeing the man have her backed up against the wall land having his fist right there in front of you
Bob:	I can remember him doing that
Camille:	Ok, there you go.
Bob:	That’s not beating though.
Camille:	What do you suppose he did after he did this [puts a clenched fist in front of his eyes] ahahahahaha
Bob:	nothing.
Camille:	nothing?
Deedee:	well there was that all the time.
Bob:	Yes, intimidation. If that’s what you want to talk about
Camille:	How does it feel?
Bob:	What, remembering it?
Camille:	I know how it feels.
Deedee:	You know how it feels? It doesn’t. You don’t remember, there WAS no feeling. You know why there wasn’t?
Bob:	Well how did I feel about dad doing that?
Camille:	How did you feel watching it?
Deedee:	I felt scared.
Camille:	You don’t know that!
Deedee:	I felt scared.
Camille:	Oh come on you don’t know.
Deedee:	Oh no, I do, I felt scared, I didn’t like it, I was scared. And you know something, when I went to your house and you and Janet argued, I was that kid again, I was that little kid again, and I was just like THIS! [rigid with fear] and I just can’t stant it! Any time I hear people screaming I just I just…There’s a mother in my class who yells at her little kid, she’s a sweet, perfect little mother and her little kid is hyper-active kid who’s on medication and she helps him through everything and she just helps him through everything, takes him by the little hand, and then she’s the perfect mother, and then sometimes she says, no, I won’t do it, and she says “YOU !@#$%^&*” and I get all upset at my desk, and I can’t “see” it, I don’t look at it, I don’t react, I don’t do anything. They’re over there, they’re doing their own thing, and this little kid, and after they’re gone the little kid said ‘was Mrs. Wentz mad at you?’ and I said ‘no, why did you think she was mad at me,’ ‘because,’ what did she say, ‘because you did something,’
Bob:	hid under the desk hahahaha
Deedee:	I felt that I didn’t want to embarrass Kyle by having him notice that his teacher was watching his mother yell at him, so I was trying not to be there, and that’s what you should do too, try not to be there because Kyle is being yelled at by his mother and there’s not a whole lot he can do about it so we shouldn’t stare at him and look at him and have him be aware that we’re all looking at him. Oh. But I’m thinking to myself, I didn’t like it, and I’m very uncomfortable.
Camille:	She just continually amazes me how she was ALWAYS aware of what was going on. Now it’s true, we have to get you to remember
Bob:	Well you know Katie and Kevin have told me many times, especially Kevin,
Deedee:	that they’re afraid of you, I know
Bob:	that they’re afraid, yeah, I have never once laid a hand on them, I have never threatened to lay a hand on them, I have never really yelled at THEM, I have yelled at situations, you know,
Deedee:	Dad never hit me, not once
Bob:	Well were you afraid of him? I guess you were.
Deedee:	I was afraid of him, yes
Camille:	You’ve got to try to remember. Cause I don’t remember being,
Bob:	well I don’t threaten anybody else either. I don’t threaten, it’s not like I’m threatening Janet or something when this is all, I’m yelling at a… a situation, I’m angry at a football game, I’m angry at a problem I can’t solve or something like that, but not angry at THEM, and not threatening to hit THEM or anybody else.
Deedee:	Well I think it’s a matter that it comes from out of the blue and you can’t prepare for it, you don’t know what you did, there’s no
Camille:	no control
Deedee:	no control over it.
Bob:	plus I’m pretty loud,
Deedee:	and you’re volatile, and it might be ok one second and the next second you… you had a bad day or something’s happened and you flip out and so, you know, they’re going ‘whoa, what if he gets mean,’ or you know, it’s the unexpected and it’s the fact that you can’t follow the rules and have it be ok and that’s the thing that when we were growing up in our family thee wasn’t any rule that we could follow where it would be ok that we would know what to expect and what was going to happen. At ANY moment, you’re getting up from the table, you bumped a let, I mean this is a normal, typical thing for a gawky teenager to go through, the %^&*( and next thing we know dishes are flyilng and everything’s
Bob:	You’re talking about what you experienced in your childhood. I’m telling you that my kids have not experienced that
Deedee:	and I’m telling
Bob:	Why should they be afraid?
Deedee:	that one of the reasons that makes your children afraid is the fact that they can’t control it. They don’t know what to do, one minute it’s ok, or they perceive that its ok because you didn’t say anything to them, and the same thing is true of Tom, he doesn’t say to Mandy, take this away from here, you know, it’s not ok for you to leave this here, it’s not ok for you to undress in the family room and leave your clothes, he doesn’t say that. He never says a word, and clothes are in the family room, and then one day he flips out of his ever loving gourd because things are in the family room. ‘You’re pigs@ you’re this you’re that you’re everything,’ and we both sort of sit back, like ‘whoa, where did that come from, who is this stranger and why is he in our house?’
Bob:	hahahahaha
Deedee:	and the same was true of you because Janet would share this with me you know, here the glass of whatever’s in the refrigerator and you don’t get upset, you don’t say, hey we don’t put glasses uncovered in the refrigerator because people could knock them over and spill something, no. You wait until you go in there and you bump it
Bob:	hahahahah
Deedee:	and then! %$^&*( and from their point of view… what made him do that, and they’re scared, they’re scared of the loud noise and all of that kind of stuff, so it was a building thing and I think that this feeling, this, I mean, I’m 47 years old. I get scared, why do I get scared, it didn’t start when I was 47, it started back when I was a little teeny kid, and I would have this experience, so every time the little thing that triggers it goes off in my head, I have the same reaction, and it doesn’t matter where I am, I can be at your house, and nothing, nothing to do with me, you and Janet are in the back room, yelling about, I don’t know, a pill or something, and I’m sitting in the family room, and I’m shaking. I’m not scared that you are going to come in and hit me, it’s taken be back.the Mother screaming at the little kid, I am shaken inside because I’m not in my classroom anymore, I’m in my home where my father and mother are yelling at each other and my mother’s going to get hit at any second, I just know it, and even if I don’t see it, I’m going to see the results of it later. Where she’s got a black eye.
Bob:	You’re right, I must have repressed a lot from my life cause I sure don’t have those recollections.
Deedee:	Penny remembers a time when mother came into her classroom one day to pick her up for something or to bring her something and she was wearing sunglasses. Mother never wore sunglasses.
Bob:	right
Deedee:	and she took the sunglasses off so everybody could see the big black eye she had.
Camille:	She would take the sunglasses off so everyone can see!
Deedee:	and Penny was mortified! Because all her classmates could see her mother with a big, ‘what’s the matter with you mother’s eye?’ what’s she going to say
Bob:	that’s a bummer
Deedee:	and then mother coming up when I was a freshman in high school. I was staying at a Mariner friend’s house, and mother came over, the whole side of her face was just all burned, just, just peeling off from burn. Father had thrown a pot of beans, baking on the stove, he picked it up and threw it at her, the beans on her face, burned her face.
Bob:	I don’t remember that either.
Deedee:	YOU weren’t there anymore. Oh, or, yeah you had to have been. If I was a sophomore, would you have been gone?
Bob:	Probably
Deedee:	No, if I was a sophomore, you were a senior. You were still at home. So I don’t know where you were, if you were at your friends or
Bob:	You’re only two years younger than me?
Deedee:	No. I was only two years behind you in school. When I was a freshman, Camille was a senior, and you were a junior, cause you graduated in 61 and I graduated in 63. I skipped a grade.
Bob:	Umhum. You were a bright kid, yeah.
Deedee:	No, I was a…
Bob:	well adjusted
Deedee:	first of the boomers.
Bob:	hahahah the class was too full, is that it?
Deedee:	that’s exactly it, when I started school there were too many children, I was the first of the boomers, that was 1946 the year the boomers started.
Camille:	Did you feel, did you bring people home? Did you have people stay over night, you know how your kids had people stay over night.
Bob:	No, I don’t remember. I didn’t have that many friends though, grade school, high school, maybe 2 or 3, Gene, Bill, Bill Jones, and George, that was it, pretty much.
Deedee:	that was high school, George was high school.
Bob:	George was 7^th and 8^th grade too
Camille:	Did they come over?
Bob:	Yeah, they came over. They didn’t stay over night, I don’t think.
Camille:	I don’t know, are boys different? Did Kevin ever have people stay over night.
Bob:	I don’t think so.
Deedee:	The little kids in my class stay over night.
Bob:	Shawn never, yes, I guess he has had a friend stay once.
Camille:	I never I don’t remember ever having anyone stay over night, I wouldn’t have dreamed of it, you see, this is something where I think the difference between Deedee and me. She was always conscious, aware of what was going on, and I just, and maybe you’re the same way, be very practical, I just internalized it. You don’t have people over.
Deedee:	well I remember
Camille:	It’s not even conscious, it’s just not done.
Deedee:	The most uncomfortable week was when I was a freshman and it was in the summertime, and one of my friends remember Sally Evans? Her mother called up and said she and her husband needed to go out of town for a week and would we keep Sally for the week? And I remember hearing mother on the phone and I remember saying to myself, “She’ll make up some excuse, surely she won’t let Sally stay here for a week, nobody could stay in this house for a week, she wouldn’t let an outsider come into this house cause I didn’t ask,” and I heard her say oh yes that’ll be fine, and I just
Bob:	what else could you
Deedee:	You could make an excuse, you can say I’m sorry we can’t, we’re going to be out of town, we’re going to do this, right, she said of sure that’ll be fine, and I said oh, my God. How is he going to go for a whole week without doing something, I’m going to die, I’m just going to die. Well he made it for a week. They picked up Sally and 5 minutes later he flips out and yells and screams and hits mother because he had to be good for
Deedee:	for a week
Camille:	oh that’ incredible, too bad I didn’t know that, I could have had somebody over too
Bob:	Hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Deedee:	I just couldn’t believe it. Harrelson knew about the house and she wouldhave hemmed and nothing, he would have yelled and screamed with her being there, but Sally didn’t know.
Camille:	ok but you see the thing is Bob we can joke and laugh about this,
Bob:	I can remember my friends saying oh, you Dad’s flipping out hahahahahah
Camille:	see, you do remember
Bob:	I remember that
Camille:	Now why would they say that?
Bob:	Because he flipped out I guess, I don’t know. I don’t remember who that was, Gene or, I think it was Gene
Deedee:	probably, yeah,
Camille:	well, it was a standing thing, when it got to be 5:00 or something, it was almost like ‘please everybody leave’
Bob:	rats deserting a sinking ship
Deedee:	Yes, that’s right, as the car was pulling up we were running out the door.
Bob:	hahahahahahaha
Deedee:	But see that the sad thing is that by the time you were in high school you were already reacted to it, when you were a little kid
Camille:	yeah, you said something earlier this afternoon about how…uh…by the time somebody’s in high school they’ve already, you know, made their thing so that by the time they’re 20…well by the time they’re 5, the personality’s already formed
Bob:	sure, that’s true

Return to Top

Page last updated on 05/17/2007

Contact Editor