early leggings stuff

The Stupids!

When I was a helpless child: without family, I was parcelled off to a foster family. I used to call them the 'stupids!' I got into a lot of trouble for my rebellious ways and for my lapse of manners for using the word 'stupid!' I'm not certain if these were the ones that chucked me out of a window tied to a chair in a dirty grey pants and vest, which matched the grey net curtains, and forced me to write books which were published under their daughter's name. It could have been them. Its such a long time ago, and since the accident my early memories are fragmented. Before it all, I spoke mostly in Latin: some French, German and English. I recall my Mother's garden, her love of nature and to hide when she lost her temper...

Sometimes the 'servants' came in to untie me for a bit, and would sit me up, legs out straight and in agony by the far wall. I think I had arthritis from an earlier 'accident'. Their daughter (who was the official author of my books) wasn't nice.

There was also most of the time a boy who lived in the house. He used to sneak in through the tiny gap left open at the door and sit beside me. He felt abandoned too.

He had an older brother who was mostly at school as was their daughter. One day, we four were all in the room, and the older two planned out an experiement. If they threw me out tied to the chair which side would come down first. They were laughing as they bet on the result. They were laughing as I fell.

I was moved after a while whether because I was so ill, or because we just couldn't stand each other. It was surprising, I was just finishing a 'perils of ...' when I was removed. They renamed the books, so I wouldn't find them again.

I detested them, they were always complaining and causing endless trouble and strifewith other people. You could never have a secret, for they would broadcast it. They would pick on one endlessly, they couldn't wait to catch you out.

Some years later the families they came from achieved social success and became much more than they were. In a way they were already priceless!

When I left they insisted on their pound of flesh, I had to be called 'stupid' at least every day and endlessly punished for wanting to read and write. I went to school, passed the 11+ and didn't get to go to the High School, I got to go to the ordinary one, where being informed I was stupid, they put me into a remedial class with children who would nowa day attend a special school. They were okay: I never found them stupid. They were lovely people with needs that over shadowed the ordinary.

I was almost happy: I took to covert reading: Homer's Illyad, and the Lay of the Last Minstral by Sir Walter Ralliegh (the visiting welsh castle version). Some days the head girl (the headmasters daughter) came in and discussed the Illyad with me. I thought he had the battle sequence wrong, which made her laugh, and quoted page number and read appropriately aloud. She was shocked I wasn't supposed to be able to speak let alone read. In the end she told her father, and I was caught out by him and the psychologist.

He took away the books: and locked them away in the cupboard. I cried. He was delighted. He waved a finger at me and said, "At last some emotion."

He put me into the ordinary classes and eventually someone from the High School came around to find out what had happened to me. I wasn't grateful. The only lessons that made any sense to me were the Grammer classes where I excelled. The powers that be cut them out of syllabus at the end of the term. The High School couldn't take me until I was 13, and we moved before that date came up.

My then (for always) foster parents said I'd lost the support of an important patron for my bad attitude and dreadful manners and for using the word stupid. They insisted that they were not stupid, and were very clever and important people. I had no idea how to tell them it just wasn't true. It's amazing how the truth can be distorted...

I retorted perhaps she should try living with them. I knew she didn't know enough to understand just why I used the word. However their report was enough to do it.

Just before I left the school in Belfast at 18, I think I saw one of their children about to start, we talked. She had been expelled for poisen pen letter writing. from many schools. I tried to encourage her with talk of a fair chance. They had given me one, so I saw no way they wouldn't give her one.

Of course people still look at me and see a blank face: little emotion, and think I'm an idiot. Sometimes it's a good thing, makes them expect less...

Nowadays: whenever I hear a certain type of malicious comment, I remember the stupids.
Sometimes I even think they live near by...

One of their many weird things: was to work through other people, and try to set up events that they were distant from. Or perhaps, if consent was required and they couldn't get something without giving up, or revealing something, they'd involve your old relationships, tangle people in illicit activities.... going places that they couldn't be seen going...

On Saturday 7th April, 2012: for instance, a fracus outside a local bank, almost as in western cowboy films. The salon doors swing wide and the cowboys are ejected, swearing loudly and fighting mad and wanting to know why they couldn't have Lady T's bank acounts... Quickly followed out by the bankstaff, demanding they never return... because they give nothing away...

now who gave them the information: and put them up to it? Not me, I wanted peace from the past and never invited them here.

.............................

Sometimes I wonder about forgiveness: a divinity. I heard someone say that to forgive means not excusing their actions, yet to let go of the anger. I'm not angry. Not now. However to say I'd forgive someone so cruel to a sick child, I'm not sure... because I'm human and not devine.

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N.B: I never found a copy of the Lay of the Last Minstral by Sir Walter Raliegh again... the version by Sir Walter Scott, I have & it's lumpy porridge against my memories of the other book of the same name...