As a kid I loved arts and crafts; especially around holidays. To celebrate Valentine’s Day for the fourth grade, I decided to make my own cards and decorate my room in cutout hearts. I worked for several days on my project and was so proud of the work I had done.
On the night before Valentine’s Day, I went to bed. I had placed several hearts that I had made in a cardboard box beside my bed. I fell asleep with a feeling of excitement and happiness. During the night however, I began to get a familiar uneasy feeling in my stomach and as I exited my bed and was stepping over my cardboard box to make it down the hall to the bathroom; I projectile vomited all over my room and went to my knees dry heaving.
When my adoptive father entered the room, he asked what was going on. I remember looking up at him and saying, “Did it hit my hearts?” This is not what he heard however and proceeded to paddle me. Now, not only was I traumatized by sudden nighttime emesis and possibly ruining the project that I worked so hard on, but now I was getting beat for reasons I couldn’t understand.
As I cried and tried to clean up my vomit off the carpet on my bedroom floor, I overheard the conversation between my adoptive parents:
“Why did you hit him?”
“He said, “Haha, it didn’t hit my stuff””.
Reflection
This was so much more than a simple matter of miscommunication. No time was given for a conversation or any clarification. It was an assumed narrative, based upon what? Not only was the “discipline” unfair, but it was also extreme. I often wonder if he would have treated a natural born son this way.
After this event, although it was not a conscious boycott; I never really enjoyed arts and crafts again. Sure, if classwork required it, I fumbled through and got it done. For me, that joy was gone though.
People wanted to give my adoptive parents medals for taking in and “straightening out” an orphan but this one event always made me wonder if I was seen as disposable. Who in their right mind would paddle a puking child? Further events would only cement this notion. I began to think of ways of exiting the situation permanently.