On becoming "Me"

This is a short article I wrote to get published in a magazine, but I have no idea how to sell it so I will offer it here. If anyone knows how I might be able to sell articles, please help. I am in pretty serious need of money at the moment. Regardless of whether I ever get a penny for what I write, I hope my words are of benefit to someone.

Becoming “ME”

A child’s smile, eyes wide in wonderment, bouncing in excitement; this is what I see many times almost every day. Most of you know that I twist balloons for a living. It’s been about 36 years now. I am so blessed, children love to greet me. Many times each week, I am hugged by a happy child. Joy!

I had a difficult childhood. Lots of abuse culminating in running away from home at 15 (or was it 13?). Years of living on the streets. Thank God for a street performer by the name of Curtis Reed. He was a live mannequin that I saw when I first arrived in Hollywood, which was the only city I knew of West of the Mississippi. When I arrived, I was shoplifting to eat. After all, what does a 15 year old runaway know about making money? If it hadn’t been for him, I would likely have wound up in the porn industry.

When I saw him standing there like a wax figure, dressed as a cowboy, I was amazed. I watched him for several days before it occurred to me that I could do what he was doing. So I went down the street and tried it. I was young, innocent and handsome—though I didn’t know it at the time—and so was able to make a living even though I wasn’t all that good at it when I started. A week after I arrived in Hollywood, I was approached by a man who convinced me that he was a porn producer. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I had found an easy way to make money, I likely would have gone with him and life would have been much different for me. From this, I have learned that if one just does what one feels is theirs to do, it is possible to change a life and never even know it.

For many years now, I have been very interested in learning how we come to believe that we are who we think we are, which isn’t who we are at all. I pay attention to how parents and their children interact as they come before me. Sometimes a child will be a little leery of this strange man blowing balloons in front of them and the parent will say, “She’s shy.” Yet, this shy girl might be hanging on my knee (I sit on a small stool when I twist) a moment later to watch me draw a face on her balloon kitty. What happened to the shy girl?

It occurs to me that, from the time of infancy until a child reaches about 7 or so, ther parents are quite literally, God, the One and Only. After all, what does a baby know of the world? Everything from how to drink water to who they are is taught by the parents. Older siblings help with this training because they have already been through it. But what do the parents actually know about the world?

I was curious about who my parents were when I was going through this period of Parents-as-God time, so about 20 years ago, I found a young woman with three small children who had recently gotten out of an abusive marriage and spoke with her of her hopes and dreams. She had no clue who she actually was or how the world worked beyond what it took to keep her and her children safe and fed. She hadn’t had time to think about the deeper aspects of life. In other words, she had no clue who she was or how she got that way.

Then I went to a bar and found an aggressive, young man about 26 (the age of my father when I was born) who had three young children and spoke with him for a little while. Again, I was talking with someone who had no clue what the world was like or how he had come to believe the things he believed. These two were representative of the two people who were most influential in programming my young mind. Neither had a clue.

So, I watch as parents talk to their children as though the child has experience with what is being discussed. I watch as the children imitate their parents when the parents aren’t noticing. Occasionally I will see an attractive young mom shrink back from a guy in the audience—perhaps she had been attacked by someone who looked or smelled like him—and I will see the young daughter also shrink back, not having a clue WHY Mom is reacting in such a way. Children often interpret stimuli much differently than it is presented to them, usually for the simple reason that the parent doesn’t wonder how the child, innocent of past experience, is experiencing the new information.

Then, usually by ten years old, children begin to notice that MAYBE their parents are humans, not God. Often, they have been to church and have been taught that God is somewhere else. So they begin to rebel. Still, our parents often retain a “special” place in our minds. There are our parents, and then everyone else. I know that I didn’t see my parents as just ordinary people doing the best they could until I was in my thirties; I was nine years old when my Mom turned thirty.

So, how did you come to believe the world is as you believe it is? How did you come to believe you are who you think you are? Have you ever wondered what you were taught before your memory gave you words to remember? What did you learn from your parents that they had no idea they were teaching? What are you inadvertently teaching your children by not maintaining the understanding that he or she has no experience with what you are doing and why you are doing it?