A Difficult Youth

The more I think on my youth, the more I am surprised I've survived as long as I have.

My parents are tiny eastern Europeans, and you should understand that as far as parental relationships, I had more in common with my Asian and Indian friends than I did with my more western friends. Eastern Europeans are hard, bitter people, hard working, self-doubting, and mistrusting of compliments. They demand their children respect them absolutely, and do not do very well in the face of rampant insubordination (as what was offered by me).

They fled when Poland declared martial law. They spent a year or more rolling around central Europe, trying to scratch out a living while awaiting acceptance into the US as political refugees. My mother was a physician. My father was a PhD in electrical engineering. She cleaned houses and he dug wells. You do what you must. They struggled, and made it to America, to give their one, single, solitary child all the opportunities they never had.

And this is what they got.

I managed to graduate college, although by the skin of my teeth. I actually sneaked into the graduation ceremony for the year I was intended to graduate in, which is a story unto itself - rambling and uninteresting, but I amused myself with my own fast talking. Bachelor's in engineering (minor in philosophy, my pride in which is due to the fact that I'm an engineer who can actually communicate) which is really nothing to sneeze at, although I could have applied myself. My epitaph will read "Could have become something if had only applied self."

Despite my present on-paper success (steady job, own apartment, self-sustaining, relatively healthy) I am still a trial, a fact made fresh this Sunday when I put a new hole in my head. This brings me to seven piercings, and this one is in the lip, so it's particularly audacious. I drink, I have smoked although I am not a smoker, I hung out with the 'wrong crowd' for the bulk of my life. To be fair, that's a rather cruel statement on my mother's part: she's stunned that I would be good friends with an actor or artist-types. I wonder how she would swing with my father's side, considering we have actors, musicians, artists, and the like. (No writers.)

I was injured a great deal of my childhood. I played rough and thought I was invincible. The latter has yet to be proven to the contrary although I've yet to really put it to the test. For several years it was dubious whether I would survive the day, merely due to how often I came home with new bandages or bruises.

Add this to the fact that I screamed and cried as an infant. I was a loud baby. I wanted my presence known, and in very angry manners.

For this, I thank my parents. Not for the gifts they have given me in life, simultaneously many and few, but for the fact that they didn't kill me. I am an only child and accident-prone. You really think they couldn't have made that look like an accident? How easy it would have been for me to - whoops! - fall down the stairs or out of a tree (both of which have actually happened to me on more than one occasion). You, too, should muse on how difficult you were for your parents - if indeed you were difficult - and thank them for not killing you. If nothing else, the reaction is worth it.

"Yes, ah," my mother said to me with a weary sigh after my thanks. "You were not an easy child."

I smiled at this. "Do you ever wish you had a different kid?"

Another sigh. "Well... you weren't easy."