I am a victim of child abuse. I never realized it until this past Friday. I’ve always wondered why I was a bit contrary but I’ve always assumed it was from years of abuse at the hands of idiot stock contractors. Open up your thesaurus and look up idiot – one of the choices will be “stock contractor.” If you check the dictionary, I’m sure under “stock contractor” you will find the word idiot. There won’t be a picture, for obvious reasons… tied to book sales, but there would be many cross references to words like ugly, fat, smelly, etc. But anyway I’ve always assumed that Mrs. Boo-ers favorite sweet little kindergardner developed personality disorders at the hands of back stabbing stock contractors.

But not so—according to person of high authority (the gender of which I can’t reveal without them disrobing, and we sure wouldn’t want to create another decade of hideous nightmares). At the end of a lengthy and heated discussion, this person concluded that I must’ve been an abused child.

I’d never considered that before. In fact I thought my “get off your fat ass and do something… quit whining… don’t blame everyone else for your laziness or ineptitude” response was quite appropriate. My dad sold Fords for 30 years. Twice was the top salesman in the state of Colorado, and managed that out of a small dealership in a town of 1200. A lot of the trucks he sold are still on the road around here. When he started, he got in our old car and drove a 200 mile circle stopping and talking to farmers and folks. And when they bought from him they always bought at a great price and he always took care of their service problems personally. And their kids bought from him and then their kid’s kids bought from him. So I know about selling, service, and work and achievement. And I won’t put up with excuses and running backwards and no frickin guts. If that means I have an attitude problem—then so be it.

But I’ve never before considered myself a victim of child abuse. Lets see… no cross-dressing uncles or aunts with dingalings... My Tennessee grandparents? I don’t remember them much, other than that they frowned a lot. My Colorado grandparents? My mom always worked so they kinda raised me during the day. My grandmother was an Avon lady, there might be something there. She was always putting stinky stuff on me that made me break out in hives, and she was the worlds worst driver – that was pretty scary. My granddad owned and ran a liquor store (it’s still there) and was an alcoholic but he was always good around me. Every hot summer afternoon he’d give me and Carl Dalrymple a Grapette pop out of the walk-in beer cooler and he even had my Lionel Train set up in the back. He was the first cowboy in our family. Always wore a good silver belly, came from Missouri with a team of ditch digging mules and helped bring water from the Poudre River some fifty miles away to make our county one of the richest agricultural counties in the world. Made a dollar a day and being a world class horse trader, he parlayed that into a farm then later traded the farm for a liquor store. Being married to an Avon lady might be enough make a person go to drinking. Or it might’ve been the mules. More likely the Avon lady though. He was the second worst driver in the world, but probably the fastest of the top five. He and my grandmother crashed going 85 in a car that weighed more than most eighteen wheelers do these days. Bet there was plenty of Avon crap scattered around those farm fields. More effective than herbicide I figure. My mom had already passed (that means died) and since they were her parents, naturally my dad never told me. I was off rodeoing and doing all the things young men do—just happened to see the dusty obit on top of the fridge six months later. Not even sure where they are buried. I’m not much of a look at the ground and talk to the box--type of person. Wherever they went, they sure ain’t hanging around in some box.

So it wasn’t my grandparents. Mighta been my four Dalton cousins--all girls and all real purty. They kinda hugged on me a lot (purty girls still try to) but they didn’t hug hard and never did anything except cross their legs when I’d drop a nickel on the floor so’s a could look up under their cheerleader skirts.

Wasn’t my dad. It said in our high school yearbook archives that he was the best athlete to ever come out of Colorado preps. Played college football and basketball and worked two jobs. But he was pretty cool. He never even said much when I crashed my Ford drag racin’… or when I allegedly burned down some straw stacks… or when I allegedly put 561 live carp in the swimming pool the night before the district swim meet (561 dead, smelly carp by the time I had to remove them) … or when I got kicked off the team the week before state for allegedly taping-up an assistant coach and leaving him in the sauna over the weekend. No it wasn’t Dad.

That only leaves my mom. I was a mother’s boy but maybe… just maybe… IT WAS HER. She swatted me on the butt once. Actually she missed but she intended to swat me. That’s got to be it!

I was going on five years old at the time. Yep… it was HER that made me so anti-social. And all I did was fall out of the back door of the car as she went around a corner. Guess it scared her. Or maybe she was still ticked off. See….I fell out when we were leaving the hospital emergency room parking lot. If my memory serves me correctly, I might’ve shot my pain-in-the-ass cousin Jimmy in his big ass with my pump-that-sucker-50-times-and-you-could-shoot-through-a-brick-wall or 43 sparrows and six robins (ooops) BB gun. I’d given a high school kid a quarter to pump it only 49 times. I was a good boy—THEN. I heard cousin Jimmy still sets off airport metal detectors and has lead poisoning flare-ups.

So I guess I could make an excuse for my wonderful personality—that I was a victim of child abuse or I could accept just responsibility for my shortcomings. Like some other people should. I’m a self made man.

Bryan McDonald
05-05-2003