MOM.... AND ME!

I always clear up, in fact I am fastidious when it comes to tidiness. The following is probably why I am how I am.

As a child I would be beaten by mother if I hadn’t done my bit towards keeping the house tidy. My mother was someone to fear - permanently. Even my Dad was careful to avoid upsetting her, although it didn’t always work.

I remember one particular occasion when I was attacked for no reason. It wasn’t funny, like an earlier attack which over the years had people laughing fit to burst. Okay, let’s start with that one, although I believe I’ve told this before. Yes, I’m sure I have, nevertheless I’ll launch it again because there is a humorous side to the tale.

At home we had an outside toilet. An internal one came many years later which led to… no, I musn’t relate that one on this post. So, we had an outside toilet which meant that on the many occasions when I came home from school bursting to do a wee I could go straight to the toilet without needing to go into the house.

There I sat, navy knickers round the ankles, enjoying the privilege of urinating, when the door opened (we didn’t lock them in those days) and my mother slapped me HARD across the face, closed the door and went back to the house. Speechless isn’t an adequate enough word and I wasn’t old enough to know any expletives.

I never found out what I had done because Mom went into one of her ‘not-speaking’ moods. 

On another occasion, when I was old enough to work in an office I would go home at lunchtime to break the day up a bit. Sadly, Mom did the same. The two of us sat at the kitchen table doing our own thing, one opposite the other. Suddenly my mother reached across the table, slapped me

hard on the face and accused me of taking something (never found out what!) from her purse. I had done no such thing but trying to tell her that was useless. She was in such a rage that, fortunately for me, instead of a full-blown attack she walked out of the kitchen and out of the house. Yet another occasion I got smacked for no reason.

I now know I was the butt of her frustrations, of which she had many. I suppose if my father hadn’t worked away so much he would have been the butt instead of me. Or perhaps that was the problem… I’ll never know!