An Essay A Day For A Year
By Roe
Day 26, January 26, 2012
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Baby animals are so hilarious to watch. Oh, they’re so cute! Human babies are no less cute, and no less hilarious. At a certain point baby anythings grow into adult anythings and they get so serious. We adult humans are the most serious of all. We all tend to take everything so serious that we have a hard time being cute. Nevertheless we all just adore watching babies be cute and hilarious. I would really like to memorize or patent cuteness and hilarity so I can take it with me everywhere I go. It would be a relief to be able to take my prideful, self conscious hat off and be like a baby again. I have never heard anyone remarking how shameful or embarrassing a baby human or animal is, but I have experienced lots of shameful and embarrassing glances when I try to be cute and hilarious as an adult.
I remember clearly the day the world stopped laughing with me, and shaming me, and how joy turned to very deep pain. I was 4 years old and I was playing cute and hilarious in the bathtub with my 3 year old female cousin. We were laughing and playing mommy and daddy, just the way mommy and daddy played in bed at night. I suppose we must have seen mommy and daddy playing mommy and daddy in bed at night. I remember that it was really fun taking turns for who was going to be on top. Suddenly my cousin’s mommy came in to check on us, and she caught us playing our cute and hilarious game. I remember clearly her screaming at us, wrenching us out of the tub, paddling our bottoms, and making a very big point that we were bad and dirty. I remember that we never got to take a bath together again, and also how the scene was painfully repeated as an embarrassing story in front of us for many years afterwards.
In my life I have many dozens of those scenes like that one engraved in my conscious memory, and as I grieve my childhood trauma I keep recovering more. By the time I grew up I was literally terrified to be cute or hilarious. After kindergarten and 12 more years of indoctrination at the hands of peers and not very cute teachers, pretty much all my cuteness had left me. As time went on I noticed that the bigger more serious kids and adults were getting as much pleasure laughing at me as they were previously laughing with me. The difference was that when they laughed with me it felt cute and funny, but when they laughed at me it made me hurt and cry. When I cried, their joy at laughing at me increased exponentially, and so did the hurt. Eventually I figured out that being cute and hilarious hurt, and crying because I was laughed at for being cute and hilarious hurt even worse. I guess for us humans at least we all learn how to not be cute or funny anymore, and we have to wait until we see babies or baby animals to enjoy cuteness and hilarity again.
Why would someone want to hurt me or my feelings? Why am I bad or dirty for playing mommy or daddy games with my cousin? Why are people getting pleasure out of seeing me hurt? Why isn’t anyone liking me being cute or funny anymore? Why are the big people so serious? These were questions I asked myself when I was very small, but I don’t ever recall clearly understanding. Eventually I ended up joining the big serious people, and looking down on little ones who were puzzled why I was such a big serious person.
I realize now that I turned out really shell shocked for being me. I was chiseled at by just about everyone day and night. Everyone had an opinion or criticism or castigation of me and how I was, and I hurried to adapt to the world’s expectation of me before I was afraid even to breathe. In my career I had two parents, one sibling, about 50 teachers, and more than 3000 peers to show me their version of my cuteness. By the time I made it out of my parents’ house and my schools, I had been laughed at and ridiculed and castigated for about everything imaginable. I was especially tortured for being very shy and sensitive, and especially for crying or being emotional.
I survived though, I guess just like everyone else. I managed to perfect how to appear insensitive, how never to cry, and if I showed emotion, I could avoid ridicule by being aggressive and angry. I even prospered in the ranks of boys no longer cute by showing explosive violent rage when I was persecuted. No one laughed at me or ridiculed me when I got suspended from school for annihilating the school’s biggest bully. When my parents found out they were proud of their shy, sensitive son, who finally stood up for himself, but still spanked me and restricted me severely for my own good. Little Roe now had a problem, but nothing some strict discipline couldn’t fix. Unfortunately I continuously outsmarted them, and they got so proud of my lack of feeling and aggression that they began to fear it. Now I could be a hero like everyone else, I thought. Now no one will make me feel bad for being cute or funny, or for crying.
Finally, when I was about to be expelled from school, I was sent to a psychiatrist for mental evaluation of my problem of aggression and rageful bouts of anger perpetrated upon anyone who dared offend me. I remember being ready to give him plenty of insensitive aggression so he wouldn’t hurt my feelings. When I walked in, I remember that he had red socks on, with plaid green pants, and a yellow shirt and a purple tie with pink polka dots. “Why are you dressed so funny?”, I asked him. Why aren’t you?”, was his reply. I remember clearly being little and serious, and looking up at this big funny guy, and bursting out laughing. “That’s funny I said!” “Tell me about funny”, he said back. I told him all my stories about being cute and funny and how it turned to embarrassing, and especially being bad and dirty in the bathtub. And then I asked him, “You’re not really going to shrink me, are you?”. He reached into his drawer and took out a tiny little plastic kid. “Yep, you’ll fit in this drawer just like the rest of you kids that are cute, bad, and dirty, and no longer wear funny clothes!” And then he waved the plastic little kid all over saying, “no, don’t shrink me, don’t shrink me!” I laughed so hard with this kind man for so long that even the secretary came in to wonder if we hadn’t gone koo koo.
This man made his recommendation that I be sent to a school for gifted children since I was “way too funny to be at just an ordinary school”, he said. On my first day of school I found a class full of weird, cute, funny, and odd kids. The teacher had pigtails like Pipi Longstocking, and wore weird black boots and a long pink skirt. Somehow these two amazing adults, and this class of weird and very funny kids, saved me. This essay is written for baby animals and humans, and just being cute and hilarious. It is devoted to Dr Weirdo, and Mrs Pipi (as we called them). Thank you.
See you tomorrow.
yourpersonalmuse@gmx.com
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