I don't know why

The sky was blue. It was a beautiful autumn day and the weather was perfect for jumping on the trampoline. I was enjoying the scenery, doing flips, not thinking, when the entire day changed. My brother was hanging out of my bedroom window, crying, phone in hand, screaming that he needed to know our father’s phone number. I ran into the house, up the stairs, past our mother’s husband, and to my room.

“Mike, let me in.” He hesitantly unlocked the door, looked to make sure that Husband C was not standing behind me, and let me inside. As soon as I entered, he relocked the door, standing with his weight against the wood for good measure.

“What happened?”

“What’s Dad’s number?”

“What happened?”

I don’t remember seeing my brother cry at any other time in our lives. I’m sure I did; after all, we lived with Husband B for six years, but this incident stands out. “He came into my room, and he said he was taking my stereo. I said he couldn’t, that it was a gift from Dad, and he said he was going to call the police on me, for being a disorderly teen. So I stood between him and the stereo, and he picked me up and body slammed me on the ground. Then he called the police and told them that I was being disorderly.”

“What?”

“He called the police.”

So I opened my bedroom door and I screamed his name. He came to the door obediently, as though I were the adult in the house. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He looked at me.

“Did you call the police?”

He nodded.

“Damnit. What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Call them back and tell them not to come.”

And he did. I don’t know why, but he did.

And then he said, “Let’s not tell your mom about this. Let’s keep this between us.”

And we did. I don’t know, but we did.

Part I

I want to conduct a social experiment. I want to grow a little person, and then deprive him/her of all meaningful social interaction for his/her entire life. That means no friendships, no relationships, no pets, no nothing. No one to confide in. No one to lean on. I want to know what happens when a person is truly all alone.

And I don't care whether the person is constantly surrounded by others. It doesn't matter. I want to know what happens when someone feels the desperation of true loneliness--the loneliness that can only be felt when surrounded by people that can only be described as strangers (even those strangers who think they're friends).

We all hide parts of ourselves. We all run from ourselves. We try not to self-disclose. We try to keep certain secrets. And some of us play this game more than others. But what would happen if we never self-disclosed? Would we implode? Explode? Have a nervous breakdown? Live happily ever after?

Unfortunately, due to the society in which we live, I would never be allowed to conduct my experiment. It would be seen as unethical to deprive a person of all emotional support systems and outlets. And as good as I am at spinning things, I'm not even sure I could come up with a convincing reason to put someone through that torture (or at least what I expect would be torture-- how would I know?).

Anyway, the point is that I can never really find out what it would be like. The best I can do is to walk myself through a thought experiment. I can imagine it. And I can write it. Thus, I am going to attempt the thought experiment. It begins with the following paragraph, and it may or may not continue in future entries. We'll see.

The Thought Experiment

She was a stranger in a room full of strangers. The others, they knew one another; but she was a stranger to each and every person in the room--including herself. Granted, she had lived with herself for her entire life, she had never suffered amnesia, and she could introduce herself well enough, but what did that tell? "Hello, my name is Katelyn McPherson." She worked for a marketing firm that specialized in advertising to children. She owned a cookie-cutter house in the suburbs, with beige siding and gray brick accents. She enjoyed planting flowers--particularly marigolds. And there wasn't much else to say. If someone had asked for more information, she wouldn't have known what to say. But then again, they wouldn't have known what to ask either. They only had so many questions for strangers.

Simplicity

We had a beautiful house. We bought it for a steal of a price--the only way we could afford to be in that neighborhood of old money. The previous owner had put renters in the house and then moved to Florida, much too far away to properly supervise the individuals who were slowly ruining their property. But my family knows construction and remodeling, so that was no concern.

The house sat at the end of a cul-de-sac, with weeping willows and oaks shadowing the large yard. There was a creek running through the middle of the back yard, and during the week we moved in, we found a nest of baby rabbits. We caught frogs from the stream, and my mother lovingly gassed and disected them to quell her curiosity as a nursing student.

We played in the living room, doing cartwheels and choreographing dance routines to Paula Abdul. We pulled crystals from the old chandelier that lay on the floor of the family room, then used the pilfered crystals as currency when creating our own little play world of car dealerships and smalltown diners.

We stole gardening shears from the garage and hollowed out an old pine tree until we had a certifiable hideaway. We dreamed up elaborate treehouses that our father would never build. We used the willows to swing through our makeshift jungle. We turned the creek into a gourmet mud kitchen, baking pies on the driveway. We climbed in the apple tree, scraping our knees royally each time we fell.

We donned raincoats over our winter gear and slid down iced driveways in the winter. We used garbage can lids as sleds. We threw snowballs on Halloween. We raked leaves into piles that never remained piles long, for their entire purpose was to be jumped in. We ran through sprinklers. We picked flowers that had been recently planted, and then lied about where we had gotten them.

We were kids. For a brief, yet beautiful, period in our lives, we were allowed to be children.

A Familiar Feeling of Fear

Have you ever seen a dog kicked across a room? Ever seen a dog slammed into concrete right before your eyes? Ever been so afraid that you didn’t even realize you were scared?

“That fucking dog!” He stormed into the house. Having just walked through the door, his eyes were fixated on a pillow. There it lay, right in front of the couch, the stuffing torn from one corner. Major. The dog’s name was Major. He joked that the name was short for “Major Asshole.” “Major! Come here!”

We stood frozen by the door. Please don’t come. Dog, if you know what’s good for you, don’t come.

But the dog came. Major walked slowly around the corner from the kitchen, entering the living room with head bowed. He kneeled down. This huge, powerful dog, knowing he was caught, laid down at the mouth of the hallway—as though he knew he was going to need an exit route.

And then, in a fit of rage that made no sense whatsoever, he stormed to the dog. He grabbed the dog’s collar, dragged him across the wood floor to the spot where the pillow lay. Forgetting that dogs know only select terms from the English language, and that it requires months of consistent training to teach dogs those select terms, he launched into a rant. “What do you think you’re doing? What do you think you’re doing tearing up my pillow? I told you not to chew on the furniture. I told you not to chew on anything. But you chewed on the pillow, didn’t you? You tore it up, didn’t you?”

The dog just stared at the pillow. He stared at the stuffing he had strewn about the living room. He stared at anything and everything except the monster who was holding his collar, forcing his nose toward the mutilated pillow.

Continuing his rant, “You don’t chew on pillows!” he grabbed the dog’s collar more firmly, yanked upward, pulling the dog to his feet. He pulled the dog around the room, yelling, ranting, not even seeming to care that his efforts were useless. This was not how you trained a dog. This was how you turned a dog mean. This was how you created a family pet that would bite small children and attack neighbors’ cats.

Pulling the collar once more, sending the dog skidding halfway across the living room floor, he stood erect. He glared down at the dog. The anger in his eyes burned with his intentions. Reeling back, pulling his foot into position, he kicked. He kicked the dog, right in the side, and sent the dog slamming into a wall.

We stood frozen, having never made it past the foyer, having never even made it into the living room. We stood there, not knowing what to do. Major ran for the kitchen. If dogs could pray, he was probably thanking god that the door to the basement stairs was open, offering a place to hide. The rest of us, we stood frozen. We watched as the monstrous man before us picked up the pillow and walked calmly to the trash can.

Years later, when he was gone, when that man could no longer terrorize us or our pets, we would realize that one theme remained constant in our lives: fear. A new man, a new “him,” a new “he,” had taken the place of the previous one. And a new pet, two new dogs, had replaced the previous one, who turned mean, as could be expected.

The new dogs were adorable, small and fuzzy, but they had a penchant for escaping the backyard. They knew every hole in the fence; they knew every platform from which to jump; they knew just how to time the running between our legs as we exited the yard. And on that day, one of the dogs, Buddy, had succeeded yet again.

“That fucking dog!” He stood at the living room window. It was a new living room, a few miles from the old. He stood at the window, having spotted the dog, running loose in the street in front of the house. He stormed to the front door, a familiar look in his eyes, an all too common feeling flooding over the room.

I stood frozen. I watched as he left the house. I watched as he ran for the dog. “Buddy! Come here!” But this time, I was older, and I was braver, or so I thought. Forcing my feet to move, I followed him outside. I ran out the front door. And as his hands caught the dog’s collar, pulling the dog toward the backyard, I yelled.

“Don’t you dare hurt him!”

If only I had known what was about to happen. If only I had been able to stop what did happen. He picked up the dog by the back of his neck. He held the dog above the fence, and he stared into the dog’s eyes. “Stay in the yard.” He said the words calmly enough, through clenched teeth and a grimace. Then, swinging the dog toward the backyard, he slammed the dog toward the concrete. He just hurled the dog down onto the ground, shattering the bones in the dog’s front leg.

And then he looked at me. He stood there and looked at me.

It was too dangerous to be frozen in place. I ran for the house, finding a phone as quickly as I could, dialing my mother’s work number. I tried to find words to explain the situation, tried to tell her what had happened as he followed me through the house. In the end, all that could effectively be said was, “Come home now,” before I ran to the backyard to find the dog, huddled with his sister, hiding as best he could underneath the patio.

At the vet’s office, my mother lied. She didn’t tell them what had happened. At home, she didn’t yell at him. She didn’t even try to address the situation. She didn’t realize she was afraid. And neither did we.