Assuming that a critical mother doesn't "rise to the level," I wasn't abused.
And abuse, whether experienced firsthand or re-experienced as a recovered memory in adulthood, has never been a subject of great interest for me. I'm aware of abuse, I understand abuse and I'm against abuse. Beyond that, it's not my fascination.
But today there was an essay in the New York Times Magazine that got me.
Entitled "Healing, Each in Her Own Time," the author explained how her 5th grader had told a school counselor about the babysitter who had schooled her in kissing and hickeys.
In the 5th grade, a certain Bobby T convinced a group of us to play spin the bottle in the basement of the boy whose mom wasn't home on Fridays. Actually, it was the basement closet. After spinning the bottle, you spent closet time with your chosen. We may have been playing a hybrid of Spin and 7 Minutes. We didn't have a rulebook.
Considering the fact that we were daring enough to create make-out Fridays, we were a pretty clueless bunch. I suspect nobody did more than I did in the closet; mostly I focused on how many minutes before the closet door could be opened without penalty. And I wondered pretty obsessively how it was that women could kiss men who breathed so loud when locked in a small space.
Good times.
These days, 5th grade closet time might be spent differently than it was spent when I was in the 5th grade. But when I was 10, there weren't many models for emulation. Even television's married couples weren't shown sleeping in the same bed. The most Ma and Pa Ingalls did was hug each other. And cry. I don't think they even had a bed.
Saturday nights - television's biggest night - were reserved for Carol Burnett. And she certainly wasn't about kissing or anything related.
When I was in the 5th grade, kissing was something we had heard about, but not something we really got to witness. We knew kissing was naughty and something to giggle over, but I'm not sure we really knew what serious kissing was or what kissing can lead to.
I consider myself lucky that it took many years before I spent time with kissers of greater experience. I consider myself fortunate that I was taught to kiss by boys who didn't know a whole lot more than I did. Despite my own precocious and rebellious nature, I believe my introduction to kissing was fairly chaste.
But I read the NYT article today and found myself feeling a weird kind of icky. A 5th grade kind of icky.
I followed the author's description of her 5th-grader's negative feelings toward kissing and her newborn dislike of men - even though she still liked the boys at school. I was sad that her introduction was ruined by somebody bad.
At first I wondered why the author had hired a male babysitter, but then I remembered that our own babysitter had been a boy. It would have been hard to see our own boy-next-door babysitter as a threat to any child's sexual safety. At most, our own boy- next-door was an official doo-doo-head...a nerd who babysat in exchange for endless amounts of potato chips. His only threat to us was neglect while he stuffed his underweight, lanky body with crunchy mouthfuls of salt and fat.
Yes, my own upbringing was fairly safe.
My own parents were home for the most part and dinner was served to the family every night at the dining room table. On Sundays, dinner was in the den or on the porch where we could watch Ed Sullivan. Eventually, Ed Sullivan gave way to 60 minutes and our dinner was accompanied by the loud fast ticking of the 60 Minutes clock.
Christmas was for vacations. Summers were for swimming. Weekends were for "day trips" to places that required way too much walking in exchange for a fun family time.
Indeed, my own upbringing was fairly safe.
My parents knew all of our friends as well as our friends' parents. The neighborhood boys and girls hung out together in the presence of parents who always asked if they could stay for dinner.
We all had to call our parents before we endeavored to walk home from another kid's house in the neighborhood. There were no cell phones back then.
What there was, back then, was the busy signal. If you were ready to leave your friend's house and you got the busy signal, you were stuck. You basically had two crappy choices: you could wait an insufferably long time in your friend's house wearing your winter coat and boots and waiting for the phone at your house to ring instead of giving the busy tone, or you could say yes when you're friend's mom or dad offered to walk you home. Neither alternative was fun.
But my world was safe.
And we were mostly innocent.
And in that safe, mostly innocent world, I experienced the same brushes with discomfort that any girl I know has.
I remember older men - family friends and neighbors - making inappropriate comments about my body when I was in junior high school and my breasts were getting bigger. For some reason, men back then were always amazed at how big you were getting when they saw you at the swimclub in your two-piece.
I remember annual trips to the "family" dentist who, my mother had informed me, was having affairs with many young women and everyone knew. Nobody switched dentists even though it was community knowledge that the man was a letch. Just the man you want touching the area around your mouth when you're busting out of your pre-teen years.
I remember the male driving instructor who talked dirty and told me I was pretty while he was teaching me to park between cones.
In those days, men spoke freely to girls. And as a girl, you didn't say anything. In those days, shame was the reaction - not intolerance.
The one time I complained - when two neighborhood boys took to following me with a camera so they could get pictures of me playing tennis and swimming - I was told that's what boys do when they like a girl. I was told to accept the attentions of boys. I was told that I should be flattered.
But it wasn't flattering.
It was just disgusting.
There's a big difference between someone responding favorably to your attentions and somebody forcing their uninvited sexual thoughts or advances onto you. The difference is especially poignant when the subject of those thoughts or advances is someone too young to know - much less assert - their own intolerance.
These days I don't tolerate much. At the age of 41, my confidence is much stronger than the desires or fantasies of any letch I know.
I love to feel sexy. If I walk down the street looking like I'm feeling good, I certainly don't mind a guy saying "nice smile" or just giving me the friendly nod of "you look nice." And that, thank goodness, happens often enough to confirm that there are healthy, appreciative woman-loving men out there.
But the fact is, there's always a guy - no matter what you look like that day - who trying to let you know he's thinking about more than your smile.
And that's inappropriate.
I always wonder - "that guy has a mother and a sister or wife or daughter - would he want a guy looking that way at them?"...
But I'm 41 and those guys aren't on my radar anymore. Inappropriate or not, they're not the men I would invite into my world.
And I'd never think twice about getting out of a car if a driving instructor was talking dirty to me.
Because when you're 41, you know better.
But when you're in the 5th grade, you don't know better. Even if you've been told what's wrong, it's hard to know for sure when people older than you are acting like it's okay.
I hope things are different for the girls growing up now. I hope that the men in their lives are more careful and more appropriate. Even if it's only because they're scared of a lawsuit.
And I really hope that the girls growing up now know that being ogled or touched or talked to in an icky way isn't something to keep quiet about.
Because if the driving instructor's teaching you more than just how to park, he's probably teaching that - and maybe more - to other future drivers.