I am a pain in the neck.

We are  engaged in a learning process almost from the day we enter this world, but can you think back to the first lesson you remember? I can.  It was all about not overplaying my hand.

This is my mother and me.  Look at that grin on my face! I was a pretty happy kid, especially, it seems, when plotting my mother’s downfall. Why? I have no idea. All I know is it began when I got a stiff neck.

If you have never had a stiff neck, I will tell you they are very painful. Knots in the muscles make movement nearly impossible. Very annoying as an adult, but for a four year old, they’re pretty terrible.  Most kids have no sense of “Suck it up, Doris, it’s not going to kill you” and I was no exception. I was in such misery that my mother finally took me to the doctor.

Important Note: When I was growing up, my father was in the Air Force, which meant that we moved a lot. We had only just arrived in this new posting and my mother was not familiar with this doctor, nor he with us. We lived on a military base, and these are small communities.

I was a fairly good child – played well with others, did not run with scissors –  but I was a talker. I know, very surprising to you all.  My mother reports that at three years of age I would sit on a swing set in the front yard and talk the ear off anyone who walked by. People took to walking on the other side of the street. I was that kid.  But up until this point, I had used my powers of speech and rapidly expanding vocabulary for good, never evil.  Which made The Incident that much more surprising to my mother.

There we were in the office of the brand new doctor. A kindly enough man, he talked to my mother for a bit and then decided to have me describe the pain in my own words.

Doc: So, Cheryl, you have a sore neck! What happened?

Me: [deadpan] My mother hit me.

My mother and the doctor no doubt locked eyes at  this moment, both thinking “WHAT?”

Doc:  She hit you?

Me: [still deadpan] Yes.

The doctor now gave me his full attention.  I suspect he wanted to make sure my mother couldn’t visually intimidate me into not telling the whole, terrible story. All I saw was a rapt audience, and I did not want to lose that.

Doc: Tell me what happened after that.

Me: Then [small pause] she pushed me down the stairs.

At this point,  I am pretty sure what the doctor was thinking: the new family have some issues.  As for me, I was mentally illustrating the story like so:

My mother was now fully aware of what was happening and knew the only way to stop this train was to kill me herself.  But that would only prove me right, so she sat there, beads of sweat prickling her scalp as the doctor, looking very concerned,  continued to talk to me. I was in my element now! A man of authority wanted to hear what I had to say. I had nothing to say, but when had that ever stopped me?  I was, however,  young. Young and inexperienced. I miscalculated, and rather than adding details regarding the stair toss, I decided I needed to step this up a bit.

Doc:  She threw you down the stairs?

Me: Yes.

Doc: Can you tell me what happened after that?

(Maybe I would have gotten away with this had I not embellished it physically with a wild sweep of the arms and a slight bugging of the eyes. Maybe….maybe not.)

Me: Then … [significant pause for dramatic effect] SHE THREW ME IN THE FURNACE!

In an instant I saw that I had lost him. The light of justice left his eyes, to be replaced with the light of wanting to smack a kid in the chops.  I no longer had his attention. I did, however, have my mother’s full attention.  Oddly, that’s where the memory ends. I assume that I internalized some lesson about this, and I expect it had little to do with “Don’t mess your mother around with Child Protective Service” and had much more to do with “Incremental increases in the dramatic tension. Incremental.”

My mother also learned a valuable lesson that day: that she was destined to spend another 14 years minimum, possibly much longer, fielding calls from various authorities who are somewhat concerned about her daughter. Which daughter?

You have to ask?