I have been mulling over one of those Formative Childhood Experiences, and decided to try writing it up and see if I can stand looking at it in print. It was one of those Events from which, rightly or wrongly, I date my subsequent understandings of The World and How It Works. We all have those.
I was eight years old, sitting on a rock behind the baseball diamond during recess, reading a book. Ten or twelve other kids about my age poured down the hill above me and started beating the snot out of me. I was too startled to fight back, all I did was shield my face. Eventually they poured on past me, probably in search of another target. I had a few bruises, no broken bones or puncture wounds, nothing really serious. But I was really shaken because, of course, I had done absolutely NOTHING to deserve this mob action, and I felt seriously Wronged.
I am sure this rings a bell, something like this happens to almost everyone at some point in their "education". But getting clobbered on the playground itself wasn't the formative experience. That came later, when I tried to tell adults about what happened.
I think I told a Lunch Lady, who said something like "oh well". I went home in a daze and told my parents, expecting more support from people who were, I figured, there to support me. They were, indeed, very concerned. And uncharacteristically in unison. But not the way I wanted.
Mother: "What were you doing when they came and started hitting you?"
Me: "Reading A Tale of Two Cities.'
Father: "Why weren't you playing with the other children? What were they doing?"
Me: "Looking for someone to beat up."
My mother and father were looking very alarmed. Not really that I had been beat up, but at my attitude. That I wasn't Fitting In, that I should above all else Fit In, that not wanting to Fit In was a sign of some major psychological abnormality.
Mother: "You should play with the other children. You shouldn't be reading all the time."
Father: "Learn to play the games better, you'll get along better."
Me: "You want me to join in their 'games'? Help them beat up the Fat Kid or something?"
They looked at one another in horror. Their child was Socially Maladjusted and planning to stay that way.
I walked away.
At least in my own mind, that episode was a beginning of a rather profound reappraisal of a lot of things.
First of all there was group psychology. The mob who attacked me was composed of kids I knew, some of whom weren't horrible human beings, but all of whom abdicated any moral responsibility to their group identity. That was just a scary concept. It is still a scary concept.
The overwhelming desire my parents had for me to be a well adjusted part of the group, even THAT group, was possibly more scary. "Well adjusted" started to seem like an epithet to me, if I had any intention of being "integrated in a social grouping" before then, it went away. I was a pariah in the schoolyard, and revelled in that fact for the duration of my education.
The incident also gave me a heightened sense of self. In the final analysis there was no one else to rely on, no Authority would be there to help me. The very people who loved me most could not be relied on to protect me or even comfort me. In fact their love and concern for me led them to advise me poorly.
I do not think I ever confided in them again, that just shook me too much. Later I understood that my parents, despite their failings, had raised me better than to follow their own advice.