My father started college at the University of Portland, studying Psychology, Logic, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and other courses, from 1947-1952. He really wanted to understand the human mind at the deepest level, and his curious mind about other issues only left him late in his life. But he had to delay his academic search for the truth about the broken human mind, as his now hyper-busy life got in the way of him finishing his studies of the human condition. Dad formed a great friendship and relationship with Father Delaney, who taught at the University of Portland, and in whose name the Delaney Institute was named. He struggled a bit with his school work, but he did stay at it over a course of five years, which did not result in a degree.
Note: I was to later pick up my father’s mantle, and I have made my own attempts to finish the job that he had started, which was understanding the human mind. And, like my father, I rebel against the spiritual and philosophical authorities of the day, sometimes sharing with the readers of my blog and Facebook readers my insights.
Now I will try putting to words the perceptions and experiences around being a youth, from the current perspective of a nearly 66 year old man. My intention is not to resort to “revisionist history” when it comes to presenting the memories and experiences of my childhood. And, I will only resort to editorials where I perceive that it might enhance or develop the story in a way that could not be done so otherwise.
Bruce circa Feb 1956
I have read in the medical reports that I was fed formula from the earliest of ages, as Mom did not nurse me. I was a fussy, crying baby, and caused much distress within our household.
A story about my early childhood was shared with me from a US postal clerk, who sought me out when I started working at the USPS in 1975. He had been an acquaintance of my father since my father started working at the postal service in 1950. Apparently, when my father was much younger and working two jobs , both for the Oregonian, and for the USPS, he only had limited time for sleep. Because I was a “crying baby” that kept him awake at nights, mom and dad would bundle me up into blankets and leave me in the garage, in the car, at night, until he left at 2:30am for his first job of the day. He first delivered newspapers for the Oregonian, then he would go to his regular day job at the US Postal Service. When asked, my mother and father both confirmed that this actually happened, though they could see no harm could have been done to me through this isolation..
My mother started back to work two weeks after my birth, because of the almost compulsive need for my father to pay off all debts, as he felt out of control by owing money to others.
Thus, I became a by-product of many baby-sitter relationships, as well as some loving family connections.
Dad, Pam and Bruce at Rooster Rock Park on the Columbia River in 1957
I started 1st grade while I was still 5 years old, having taken an advanced entry exam to qualify me to start earlier. My mother arranged for this because I was so unhappy with the baby sitters that my parents had arranged to care for me (one, Jo Stanley, was an unloving presence who also had an abusive teenage son who terrorized me). My mother especially wanted to help me get out of my baby sitting hell. This ended up adding stress to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Tozier, who had a difficult time accepting me and my behavior. To quote her, from my first grade report card:
“Bruce’s main problem is talking to others and to himself. Some of his behavior problems have disappeared, however, and he is working hard”.
In the third grade, she had me again, and her final statement about me was the following:
“Bruce is a careful worker and wants very much to do his work correctly. It has been interesting and rewarding to watch him develop this year. His main problems are social ones”.
I spent a lot of time under the dunces cap in the back corner of the room in her class. Mr. Hill, the school principal and Mrs Tozier required that I take medicine for my hyperactivity to continue to be allowed in her class. My mother and my doctor conspired together, and I was prescribed sugar pills, which were placed in a methedrine labeled prescription bottle. The “prescription” was given to Mrs. Tozier, who made sure that I took the fake pills daily. I miraculously improved, though I believe that Mrs Tozier’s behavior also improved through me taking the placebo!
Third grade photograph, Bruce back row, third from right
Third grade photograph, Bruce back row, third from right
My sister Pam was a fourth grader at Cedar Oak Park Grade School, and I was one grade behind her. I was small compared to some of the bigger boys for grade three, having been admitted to 1st grade when I was five years old.
After school one day, I began the walk back to our house, located about 3/8 mile away. My sister also was preparing to leave, but she first wanted her new boyfriend to meet me. Her boyfriend had a younger brother with him, who was a first grader.
My sister started to tease me, as she would often do. Her boyfriend offered to beat me up for her, then saw how small I was, and said it would be funner to watch his little brother beat me up.
I had never been in a fight, and I wanted no part in the bullying behavior. The first grade boy, who was about my size, proceeded to start punching and kicking me viciously.
I did not know what to do. My father had never taught me how to defend myself. My sister taunted and laughed at me
When the boy added insult to injury by pulling my ears and hair after tackling me to the ground I had taken more than enough of a beating. For the first time in my life I felt a surge of energy unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I began to not only resist the physical assault, I started copying the fighting bevior of the other boy. I proceeded to clean his clock, and when the older brother got concerned for his little brother’s safety, he pulled me off.
I was still so riled up I began to go after the big brother, but my sister broke it up by laughing some more, and dragging her boyfriend away,
I had learned how to fight. I also learned that some boys are untrustworthy and prone to capricious violence against innocent people, like myself.
I learned how absolutely vulnerable I was.
I started playing more with the girls, too, who played non violent games, like kickball, instead of the often times violent game of prison ball
My mother was a constant presence of love and respect for me. She was a great supporter for me throughout all of my years until her death. My mother, in case in it is not obvious elsewhere in this story, was my “great protector” from the over-extension of male punitive technology and methodology. I had to draw her into a couple of the discipline efforts that my dad extended to me, especially when his belt hit my ass especially hard and often. But the image of my mother crying hysterically as my father raised his belt into the air remains one of those “marker memories” of a traumatized life. My basic discomfort with aggressive male energy probably started here, and this “fear” informed and guided me through all of my relationships to follow.
As a child, it appears that I learned that my personal world could be an unsafe place, especially while I slept. I remember most nights lying awake at least until midnight, fearing sleep and its dreams, until I fell asleep out of exhaustion, even if I was put to bed at 8:00pm. I remember using that extra time to rehash my entire day, and everything that I said and did. I would try to see where I could have behaved better, or differently, for a greater advantage. I intuited that if I were a “better person” by day, my nightmares at night might not be so severe. Yet, my day time behavior rarely improved, for I was fairly spontaneous, and I tended towards impulsive activity.
I have memories of waking up from sleep, and, with my older sister, walking over to the garage window, and crawling up onto my rocking horse to look out of the window, to see if our parents’ car was in the garage. Of course, if the car was gone, we were both distressed by the parents’ absence, and, to this day, we both agree that this event did happen, and it happened several times.
Uncle Wayne and Bruce on the famous rocking horse given to me by my great Grandpa (Grandpa Henry’s father
Other memories include terrifying nightmares almost every night until I was 8 years old. I would be so afraid that I would stay in my bed and pee it quite frequently, which presented some problems over those early years (I was removed from the top bunk of a bunk bed that my sister and I shared for a while, of course, because of a couple of yellow “waterfalls”, leading to us having separate bedrooms at age 4 for me).
I had fantasies about friends, of which I had so few (or none) in the early years. One fantasy with remarkable staying power is that the only people that will be attracted to me are those that somehow I miraculously saved their life, otherwise people would be uninterested in befriending or loving me, which led into a few real life disastrous situations in early adulthood, and later on. We lived in an area devoid of children my age and sex prior to 1965, and so I grew up fairly isolated from friendship until we moved to a new neighborhood, where it was a much more mature neighborhood, with more options for childhood friendships located closer to our new home.
Even after I started sleeping by myself, my mother allowed me into her bedroom at night after my typical nightly nightmare terror sessions, as long as dad had already left for work. I remember how protected from my demons I felt, as I lay in bed with her. I also know, now, that I unconsciously sought out women, MUCH MORE THAN MEN, to bond with, with the hopes that the relationship would bring a measure of safety and acknowledgement into my life, which seemed to be quite lacking in too many of my male to male connections. Yes, this was to become an unconscious “center” , yet another locus of energy, in addition to other ‘energy’ centers (such as the fear of being ignored), around which all of my future perceptions were to be influenced by.
There were many moments in the earlier reaches of childhood when I really loved my life. What I really remember well from my childhood memories are:
My love for my mother, my uncle Wayne, and my maternal grandparents (who provided for me a safe, loving home to stay with them at least one weekend a month for most of my childhood),
My conflicted love for my father,
My love for our pets
My love for exploring the outdoors,
My love for playing with and studying animals,
My love for running through the forests on trails, or creating my own trails,
My love for building ground forts out of fallen branches,
My love for climbing trees and making tree forts,
My love for exploring islands on the Willamette River near our home, and ,
My love for playing with friends, which were especially hard for me to find, or to make while I was young.
Sometimes, I felt uncomfortable around people my age, especially the boys. I did not always enjoy playing with the boys, who could be too aggressive. In first through fourth grades, I usually hung out with the girls, and I played kick ball and other non-contact or reduced violence games with them. I would become quite attached to one or two girls, and I was already trying to figure out how to incorporate a girl into my life quite prematurely. I preferred girls to boys, becoming overly attached to girls when I was as young as 8 years old. The girls, by and large, totally lost interest in me by 5th grade, so I had to stick with the guys for most of my childhood from that point forward.
I usually like my father, but i was often angry with him. Many times dad was my only friend, and I felt betrayed by him whenever I was over-enthusiastically punished for doing something wrong. I was always guilty of doing something wrong, whether I admitted it or not. If I did not admit it, I was lying, which could lead to yet another swat (As the Course in Miracles has stated, these were unrecognized calls for love).
The day after the Columbus Day storm of 1962, when tree branches and fallen trees were everywhere, including our large backyard, my dad was so controlling as to how I was supposed to pick up the branches that I got angry with him, abandoned him, and walked a mile to help Steve Roth (son of owner of Roth BMW) and his family clear the wreckage around their home. I liked Steve’s mom, anyway, as she was always so friendly to me. They were comparatively wealthy, and I remember being told by Steve’s mother that my father was not rich, like they were. This was the first time that I became conscious that there existed people who were better off than we were.
I stole from my father’s wallet sometimes, so that I could go to the store and buy candy. I did all sorts of things that I knew to be wrong, yet I took some delight in going against authority, and boy did I pay the price! There were too many beatings with the belt. Most of the behavior that I was accused of I actually committed, so in Dad’s mind I deserved what I got, though mercy sure would have been a nice charitable gesture, had he offered it to me, or my sister. Looking back at my childhood, I was confused as to the best way to attract attention, and it may have been a subconscious desire to be recognized that motivated me to ’go against the grain’.
I was taken to Sunday school at a local church, when I was six years old. I did not like it very much, and I did not nor could not believe that Jesus Christ “died for our sins”. I knew that I was not a “sinner”, at least not the way that they were trying to explain it to me, and that the language of this church was very harsh and confusing. When they tried to tell me that my only hope was to believe all of their vague, boring stories, I balked, and in my own unique passive/aggressive fashion, I just ignored what they tried to teach me. These Sunday School experiences appeared to show me that the church was promoting a bunch of confusing stories with little relevance to my experience. I tried bible study only two more times in our new Milwaukie neighborhood, but stopped when a girl that I was interested in at the time stopped attending. Yes, women were the best reason for going to church. For me, that would prove to be true at least two more times, beginning when I was twenty eight years old.
My father loved dogs, and would always try to have a dog available for our friendship. He instilled into me a great love and appreciation for the canine species, which I still hold onto tightly. I loved my first dog Nina, who died while running with me while riding my bicycle along a busy road while I was 7 years old, having been hit by a car (my fault for riding too far from home). I, of course, was devastated, and my dad and mom knew better than making me wrong for her death, but I knew it was my fault anyway. Our “replacement” dog was promptly run over by our next door neighbor when he got into his truck and backed over our sleeping dog. Heidi was our third dog, and she was a beautiful Samoyed. She became, without a doubt, the most wonderful creature that I had ever met up until that era of my life. I began to recognize the miraculous power that the ‘love’ for another being has on me. She became the ultimate canine companion for me, as well as for our entire family.
The strawberry picking, sucker punch story might fit here.
Another aspect of “family shaming” was evident whenever my father came to sports events that I was involved with from 6th through 8th grade. He never took the time or effort to teach me or coach me on sports, but he was overly critical of me and my level of play on athletic teams. One of his famous public humiliations of me was when I was pitching on the mound one day, and dad yelled out “you couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn!” That is just an extension of the same “blanket party” behavior that he adhered to whenever he felt the need to garage my baby body. I won’t go into the details of the discipline that was administered to me over the years of my childhood, but one little story is quite telling. A machine gun toy was donated to the Oak Lodge Fire Department during their toy and joy drive one Christmas in 1969 (that was where my mother worked then, with me being 13 years old at the time). The gun had some damage to it, which is probably the reason why it was donated. My mother brought it home for me to mess with. I tried to get it to work, but could not. I began dismantling it, trying to understand how it worked so that I could attempt to repair it. Ann Cook, a daughter of some friends of my parents, was over visiting me at the time. Dad came downstairs and saw the gun parts spread all over the basement floor, accused me of destroying the gift, and then proceeded to remove his belt, and whip the hell out of me, right in front of Ann. That one hurt a lot of different ways, for sure. I was horribly shamed, but it did not feel too unusual, at the time. Little did I know at that time that for me to disassemble and examine, and then to attempt to reassemble, my own life experience was to become my life’s greatest challenge, and then passion, at a much later point in time.
School was not a problem for me in the new neighborhood, as the quality of the North Clackamas School District, at least in the grades schools, was substantially lower than that of the West Linn area from which we had moved from, so I was already a bit ahead of my peers, at least in math and English. And, if the truth be known, I was starting to really get a handle as to how to succeed in school, by watching and imitating the behavior of others who were doing well. I noted at the time that I despised, at times, the competition to get good grades at school. Teachers graded on the curve, meaning that a small percentage of the students got A’s, as well as the same percentage got F’s. Part of me had associated getting good grades with getting love and acknowledgement from my parents, and I hated the idea of having to compete with others to get love at home. It was this experience that led me to sometimes feel good about other student’s failures at school, since it might mean that I would thus have a better opportunity to score some attention points. Collaboration was definitely out of the question for me while living in this scarcity consciousness.
I started to become a bully to some girls around the age of 10 years old. If they were not attractive to me, they were susceptible to gentle, and not so gentle, ribbing and ridicule. I found a behavior where I could get support from other boys, but it was damaging behavior on my part, and was to bring shame to me when confronted at a later time by victims of my abhorrent communication style. One time when I was 15 years old, and waiting for a bus in downtown Portland, a young woman walked up to me, asked my name, and then asked if I knew who she was. I had no idea. She then told me how I victimized her with my poor humor, and made her pee her pants once. I told her that I was sorry, that was not who I was now, but I felt ashamed. I met another of my victims when I was close to 40 years old in an Oak Grove Fred Meyers store, and I sought her out, introduced myself, and apologized for what I had wrought upon her. She had long ago forgave and forgotten, but I had not. It felt good seeing her living a successful life in adulthood, complete with a happy family. Yes, I was part of the oppression and traumatization of the feminine spirit, until I became conscious.
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