Cry
Baby
With two grandfathers who made it through four years of World War One, I
estimate I am half military by DNA. And
yet my first nick name around Rue LaPalme in Montreal was ......Cry Baby.
This is because I cried easily, like most
small children.
I only recently discovered that there is a name for overly sensitive, empathetic children,
and that is: Empaths. We have entire communities on the Internet, and host of therapists who consider this extra compassion
to be a helpful gift.
Though most of my memories begin around age four, I was
a little smaller when I was first aware of the seeming accusation of Cry Baby. I
know this because of the type of fashionable
outfit I wore on that bright spring day when I pedaled forth on my new red
tricycle to try to make it around the corner to the next street.
The playsuit featured ruffled rompers, pants
that blossomed out like a skirt, then tucked into the upper leg with elastic
bands. I loved this suit because it was
pale shell pink, with dark green, cerulean blue, and red drums on it, sort of a
tin soldier theme, there were even drumsticks crossed over the tiny musical
instruments.
But mostly it was pink,
thick cotton and starched with real starch. Clothes smelled nicer then. That’s
because Canadian mothers took the time to use starch, and real old fashioned irons that
sometimes left scorch marks.
The starch and the Tide laundry
soap and the hot iron and the open-air laundry lines all contributed
to the subtle scent of our summer clothes.
Smells alone ring powerful memory bells, and this combination gives me a sense of security.
I wore
a matching sunhat, which I was unable to tie in the back. It crossed at the
back of my head with small
straps enclosing a ponytail.
Optimistically with no expectations of
trouble, I rounded first our own corner only one house away from my duplex, and turned to the
left heading towards the next corner. My mother out in the backyard could see
me if
she looked up from her gardening. A
little boy a few inches taller than me was stamping on a caterpillar in the
first backyard. Killing insects was a No No in my own overly kind world.
Looking up he spotted
me, something more challenging than an insect.
He ran towards me quickly, and before
I could
put my hands up to stop him, grabbed the visor of my sunhat, and yanked it
hard down over my eyes, causing me to burst into tears.
Then I turned the tricycle around, fleeing quickly, while struggling to right the
twisted sunhat, quite a challenge.
“Whhhhaaaaaaaahhhh,” I cried.
“Cry Baby!” The little brat snickered.
I wanted to run quickly back to my mother. Fight or flight, and flight
seemed logical.
“Whhhhaaaaaaaaahhh,” I pedalled up the
driveway to my mother, now opening the kitchen door.
My mother had a cavalier attitude, and dished
out conventional advice.
“You have to stand up to these bullies,
or they’ll just keep on doing that.”
“Whhhhaaaaaaaaahhh,” I crinkled my nose.
"Whack him back," she said, "Teach them a lesson."
The
neighbourhood bully was an obstacle in my tricycle path, an obstacle I had
failed to push on past. My first confrontation with a bully, an adversary, one who caught me by surprise, who was bigger
than me, more aggressive, and whose sudden hostility was a baffling mystery to me.
