When one makes an observation upon an item or event, whatever it is that has just been observed has changed.
There are the actual physics of what happened, of course. Say for example on Planet X there is a large mountain many times the size of all the mountains here on Earth. There is a quaking of the land on Planet X and it causes an enormous boulder to be jostled loose. It tumbles and bounces its way down the mountain only to land in a few tiny pieces at the end of its journey. There are the dynamics, kilograms, meters, rate of speed, etc., at which it fell, bounced, and so on. But as soon as one person has observed how this boulder managed to find its way down the mountain, the observation never corresponds with the physics.
Naturally, the more people who witness the event then becomes the myriad ways that it must have unfolded.
Human perception easily muddles the physics and dynamics of what has literally materialized. In fact, within the brain itself it can be seen, with the help of brain imaging techniques, that merely recalling or remembering something causes physical changes in the shape of that memory which can be measured and observed. Neuronal pathways from the memory begin to connect and disconnect leaving a new memory in place of the one that was just recalled. In other words, the more times we recall (remember) how the boulder fell, the less accurately we will find that the boulder fell as we continue to recall the event. Memories are more accurate and intact when they are left alone. It was Dr. Ian McGilchrist who cleverly said that we paint all things with our emotions and desires. I believe he was putting it rather poetically. I would say the more we remember and recall things and events the more they become polluted and distorted with our emotions and desires.
If one can imagine for a moment what all this means it can hold valuable significance. The more intense a memory is, the stronger are the emotions that are used to store that memory, therefore, the stronger are the emotions required to bring it to the forefront of our thought. I quite often realize that there are things I have remembered from my childhood that were extremely impactful when they happened. I often get a strong feelings and emotions that begin to swell up in me as they are recalled. To study them for any amount of time, beyond simply recalling them, can cause a storm of strong physiological effects to begin.
I recall when my mother, myself, my sister, and our stepfather, Stan, whom my mother married twice (but during their second marriage he committed suicide in a very gruesome manner), lived in Glendale, Mississippi. His two children Kevin and Kelly lived with us as well. It was a heavily wooded area and it had a small shed to the side of the house against the property line near an open field. The sewage emptied into the back yard about fifty yards away in an area that smelled horrible and the water was black as tar. I remember the extremely large, green, slimy frogs that would jump into the sewer pit after a loud croak upon hearing our approach. I never managed to catch one despite my efforts.
Photo: My granny (Claudice), mother (Melanie), stepdad (Stan), me, and my sister (Nicole.)
Across the barb wire fence which surrounded our property there was a vast field where stood a single, gray, dead oak tree that was enormous. The field had tall yellow grasses that blew in the wind and the night sky could be seen for miles in most directions. The brightness of a white moon often lit up the night sky.
When we arrived on the first day to move in we went to inspect the small tool shed at the edge of the property. Much to my surprise, and everyone else’s, the previous people living there had left their dog locked-up inside. Hard to believe that this was done without intention as there was actually a padlock on the door.
Me and that dog played in the forest until dark every day that I was not in school and typically until dark once I came home from school. I would find mushrooms in the forest and kick them around and some would even exploded into clouds of dust. Those were my favorite. I also climbed trees no matter how tall they were or how difficult the climb might seem, with my dog waiting just below. Sometimes I would jump from one limb to the next on my way up the trees, only to realize that it was much more difficult climbing down. The taller the trees were, the more anxious I was to climb them.
Quite often there was a source of water, a stream, a creek, or a river that was nearby which always offered a great source of entertainment. I always brought back snakes, strange insects, lizards, frogs, antlers, dead animals, or whatever I could find. My favorite thing to catch was the multicolored “crab” spider that inhabited our area. I would often pick them up by the spikes on their back. The Golden-Orb was another favorite of mine. These bright yellow and black spiders were as big as two inches. I liked to touch them on their back and watch them shake their web aggressively to try to get me to go away.
One day after school I was given a hatchet that was perhaps left behind in the shed with the abandoned dog. I ended up on a medium-sized popcorn tree in our front yard one day. I worked on it with my hatchet until dark after school each day. My enthusiasm for chopping it down was only reinforced when Stan said that I would never succeed in my endeavors. On the third day I chopped away once again for several hours immediately after school.
My hands and palms oozed clear fluids and blood. I recall vividly as I have my whole life how I leaned against it in exhaustion and it seemed to move a little in the direction I was leaning. I studied it for a moment. Then I was filled with excitement as I recalled from previously watching a cartoon how the character pushed a tree over quickly after chopping on it. So, for the first time, I gave it a push and it began to move. I stood back and looked around in disbelief. So I pushed it several more times and eventually I began rocking it back and forth until it began to fall over under its own weight.
When it fell it went toward the road and fell on the power lines. Because of the power lines it didn’t actually fall to the ground. Stan, who was drunk and high on drugs and pills had to use our car and a chain to pull the tree back into the yard. He laughed the whole time with admiration for my determination and eventual success. He talked about having to eat his words. The whole while my mother was jabbering on about how I could have been hurt or killed. My hands were completely blistered and torn from my grip on the hatchet. I always wanted a hatched just like the boy in “Where the Red Fern Grows.” Now I had one and I knew how to use it. I shall never forget that day.
Many, many years later after the house was torn down, or maybe it was destroyed by a fire, and I was now much older (and nothing was left of that property but an empty field and memories) I came back to that property. I do not recall the circumstances that led me back there. I do remember that when I arrived, however, I went straight to the area where I chopped down that popcorn tree to see if a stump was still there after all those years.
As I walked over to where I expected the stump to be, I began to experience very strong and peculiar emotions. I came upon that old gray stump that I was intently looking for. It produced an immense feeling of nostalgia. I was incredibly heavy with emotion upon seeing that stump; gray and surrounded by weeds. It was not nearly as big as I remembered.
I can remember many events from two and three years of age as well. I have actually asked my mother and my grandmother to validate some of these memories and they have always been astonished at my ability to recall past events so well. It is said that the more traumatic a child’s developmental years are the more likely it is that the child will recall these earlier days when they get older. I wish to revisit some of my earliest memories with you here and now. Some of the following have never been talked about before with anyone in my entire life.
One extremely early set of encoded information that I retrieve and look back upon occured when I was less than two. My father often had old rusted fifty gallon oil drums that he kept so we could burn our trash in them. If one can imagine a ship coming to America from overseas loaded with fifty gallon drums full of crude oil then one will be able to imagine the exact containers I am speaking of. He would burn trash in them and occasionally he would put motor oil or diesel on the ashes to burn them down even more. Once the barrel was full of burnt ashes he would get someone with a backhoe to dig a hole and the drum would then get buried. They were incredibly heavy when full of wet ashes and metal, so the backhoe would dig a hole right beside the oil drum, then knock the drum over into the hole. He never lived anywhere without these drums.
I recall it was a hot summer day in Moselle. Me, my mother, and my father were in the backyard. There was, of course, the large fifty gallon drum present where we burned our trash. One day while I was in the backyard with my mother, he started a fire in the drum.
I can’t remember much about the little brown puppy but somehow it had died, or he killed it for some reason, which is not an unreasonable thing to think. Either way, I remember that once the fire was started in the barrel and the orange flames where licking the air, he picked up my little brown puppy by the tail and walked over to the burning drum. The puppy was stiff and full of fire ants.
I asked what he was doing. He simply told me he was going to burn my dog because he was dead. I can’t say that I was even sad, as I knew very little at this age. He continued to tell me that it was so that he could go to heaven. He pointed to the clear blue sky above and said, “God is waiting for him.” Looking back I can say that this is a horrible thing to tell a child at such a young developmental and impressionable age. To tell your child that a selfish God wants your puppy to die so it can be burned and go to heaven to live with Him is beyond comprehension. This is probably my absolute earliest memory and its not really all that pleasant in many respects. I do remember being terrified that someone lived in the sky who had the power to take whatever they wanted.
I also remember my mother alone with me, carrying me back and forth across the floor in the living room in our tiny single-wide trailer in the woods. She wasn’t much of a breast feeder. I learned later in life that I was usually given a pacifier.
If I cried, or for whatever reason was upset, they always shoved the pacifier in my mouth. But my mother seemed to be rather detached from me as an infant. Maybe I was a burden. Maybe she was unfit. Maybe it was a hazardous combination of both. But I can remember a few instances where she seemed to enjoy playing mom.
I can see her walking with me cradled in her arms to the left. She would sing nursery rhymes and often she would take my left hand and with her right hand she would count each of my fingers one by one. “One, two, three, four, five,” she would say as she held each corresponding finger in the air.
I guess she was being a good mother by teaching me to count and spending time with me, but she was being a bad mother by allowing fear to keep her from leaving the abusive man she married. The man who made me, as an infant, eat my own throw-up. Typically these incidents would happen as I would sometimes cry until I made myself sick. I can remember clearly sitting in my highchair and eating black eyed peas and drinking red Kool-Aid from a sippy-cup one night. My father and mother were staying in the dorms. My father had just walked in and I started crying for some reason. He began shoving the peas into my mouth and yelling hateful slurs at which point I spilled my Kool-Aid over the peas. He continued to shove them into my mouth as I cried and screamed. I started throwing up and he then became intent on teaching me a lesson by forcing the mess down my throat as I continued to choke. I hate black eye peas to this day.
The same man who put a revolver to my head when I was about one year old and held me in the air and threatened to blow my brains out and make everyone watch. The man who would tie me and my car seat to a tree deep in the woods at night so he could sleep without listening to me cry from hunger and abuse. The man who would take me in my car seat and leave me on the side of the road and drive away as I screamed for dear life. I can say that honestly I still have nightmares about that bridge over the Bouie River where he usually performed this stunt. In my dreams the river is flooding and there is no way out or across the fast moving, high-rising, brown water. I am absolutely terrified of muddy rivers to this day.
My first year or two in school was at Petal, Mississippi. It was a time in my life where I was taken out of class, and school, several times a week because I often succumbed to severe, and random, nose bleeds. A problem I would later share with my half-brother, Taylor. My grandma Holliman said that she thought it might be a result of some incestual family history. She often tried to tell me who married who, and so on, but I have no idea who these people are. But yes, lots of my uncle’s married first cousins in my family.
Ms. Burt (I believe that was her name) was possibly my first teacher and likewise my first real experience with the outside world. I was a very troubled child. I feel certain that any teacher whom I encountered before fifth grade will say to this day that I was the worst child they ever had. I feel so bad about the heartache I must have caused. Once in junior college while standing in the lunch line, I did happen to see my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. MacMellon. I apologized to her so many times for being a little shit in her class.
I was so bad in first grade, in fact, that Ms. Burt eventually moved me and my desk to the back of the room. She placed me right beside her teacher’s desk. This, I believe, only gave me the attention I sought and made things worse. I was paddled almost daily. Sometimes Ms. Burt would pass the paddle on to someone else who could do it even harder. In other words, the disciplinary actions were quite often performed by people, teachers, or staff I had never seen before and who, supposedly, had a reputation for setting kids straight.
The overwhelming amount of discipline and seclusion that I received as a child at school only made my life worse. As a child I now received punishment, beatings, neglect, and seclusion at home and now at school. Next, I remember something that perhaps I will never forget.
The next day when I arrived at school there was a tall refrigerator cardboard box where my desk was. One of the teacher’s had just bought a new refrigerator apparently. I didn’t see my desk but I was not aware that the tall box had been placed over the desk.
When I entered the classroom and began looking for a place to sit, one of the teachers grabbed me as another teacher lifted the large box from over my desk. I was told to take a seat. As I sat in my desk, one of the teachers (I’m not sure which teacher it was as my homeroom teacher had assistance from another teacher from another room) took a large roll of gray duct tape and taped my legs to the desk. I was told not to move or otherwise be a distraction.
The large box was placed over my desk and as the darkness set in, I could hear the teachers trying to decide how I was going to be served my very occasional classwork. They didn’t want to remove the box each time I had an assignment. Then after several minutes one of the ladies took a box cutter and cut a jail slot in the box toward the top. I had no idea what was going on or why I was being treated differently than the other students. However, sometimes through this jail slot an assignment would land on me from out of nowhere.
I found, perhaps to everyone’s dismay, this to be very exciting. I learned that by making ghost sounds and scratching on the box I could keep the children entertained. Seldom was I even told to be quiet. I was completely ignored. The other children would laugh at my ghost sounds and scratching noises but only briefly as the teacher would try to quiet them again. I can’t remember that another child in this grade, class, or school was nearly as much trouble as I was. Or, more appropriately, as troubled as I was.
In this same class, before the box entered my life, I can think of one other incident that was cause for me to get paddled. In fact, I think it might have been this incident which led to the box being delivered to the classroom in the first place. I can’t help but wonder who brought the box to the school. Was it one of the teacher’s husbands in the back of his truck? I mean, it was a refrigerator box so it was pretty large. I have tried to play this scenario out from scratch in my older years over and over. It can be quite entertaining until you realize that no one questioned it or otherwise thought to seek out an alternative form of dealing with a troubled child, then it just becomes sad.
On this particular day in class, we students were all handed a sheet of paper for an assignment. As such, we were told to right “SHEET NUMBER ONE” in the top right-hand corner. Apparently, the teacher had spelled the word “S. H. E. E. T.” on the chalkboard, letter by letter, and pointed to it telling us how to spell it on our paper. I thought I was doing it correctly but I spelled “S.H.I.T.” in the top right hand corner and it would cost me dearly.
It wasn’t long after walking into class the next morning that I was called into the hallway and asked why I put that particular word on my paper. I said I was told to do so. I was quickly informed that such was not the case. My teacher told me that I had spelled a bad word only used by adults. I was not able to understand what she meant exactly. I repeated to her that we were instructed to spell sheet in the top right-hand corner. I thought that was what I had done. I was then told how to spell sheet the correct way and simultaneously informed that because I was a troublemaker, I had spelled a “bad word” on my paper in order to cause more trouble. The paddle board was handed to one of the teachers present who eagerly paddled me for being such a menace. I can remember how completely ignorant I was to anything that was going on in my world during this time in my life. I was scared of everything and everyone.
I can’t recall much from second grade other than the naps taken on small green mats in the middle of the day while in school at Petal. Because of its location and because of the economics as they exist in south Mississippi, the school I attended was full of poor black “young-uns.” Me and my sister were the only white kids at the school other than two brothers who suffered from severe epileptic seizures. As a result of the seizures they had to wear football helmets all day; even at lunch and on the playground. I wonder where they are today?
Third grade was spent in Glendale, Mississippi. I went to a school called North Forrest. I don’t remember much about this school or my time there. What I do remember though may never dissipate. I can clearly remember not being allowed to go out and play with other kids or participate in class projects. These teachers had been warned about me with letters from the previous school. It didn’t take long before I was eventually surrounded by several bookshelves against the back wall and that was where I sat for a very long time.
Mrs. Curtis caught me playing with my penis once while I was alone. I’m not sure what I was doing to be honest. She didn’t say anything, probably because of the other students, but rather she just walked away. I could tell that I was doing something wrong, again, but wasn’t really sure what.
Ms. Holifield was the homeroom teacher and she walked with a limp. She was a little older than Ms. Curtis. Ms. Curtis was usually the one in charge of the class when we played a game called “around-the-world.” The purpose of this game was to teach us our multiplication tables. Although I could care less about multiplication I was very competitive.
Fran was a cute little redheaded girl and obviously the smartest person in the class. She sat in the front seat of the first row by the classroom door. She sat in front of her best friend, the second smartest person in the class, Katie. These two girls were extremely good in all aspects of their education.
They were very quiet but knew all the answers. Katie was the most shy of the two, only giving answers when called on. But Fran was eager to answer and always willing to show how smart she was. She always had her hand in the air. Good for her. I often think about them. Naturally, I was the troublemaker at school, but I had earned their respect starting on one particular day.
With “around-the-world” Ms. Curtis would hold up a flash card that would have a multiplication problem on it. The object was to beat the person you were standing beside and advance to the next person. You could go around the class, or “around the world,” if you were good enough. Watching Fran and Katie compete with each other was always a sight. They were always the first two to get it going, as they were first and second students in the class on row one. I was probably the third child on the fourth row. There were five rows in total.
Fran almost always would beat Katie first and continue her rampage up and down each row. Each student would stand beside Fran and then Ms. Curtis would flash a multiplication card. Fran would always yell out the correct answer while her victims were still counting on their fingers. Sometimes, I am sure, her opponents never even had time to clearly read the multiplication question being shown before Fran would yell out, “35!” or “144!” as loud as she could. Likewise, she was never wrong. Never. It was a brilliant spectacle.
I can remember the first time Fran made it to my desk. I stood up and almost as quickly as the card was flashed, I yelled out “50!”. Now it was my turn for domination and Fran had to sit in my desk as I advanced to the next person, then the next. Something about making her sit in my desk was very rewarding. Turned out, I would beat Katie as well when I made my way to the other side of the room and would hardly ever have to sit down. If I ever did, it was only Fran or Katie who could do it. I was unstoppable. But the fact that I was a troublemaker was never overlooked.
Typically, I was not allowed to go outside to recess with the other kids. I found myself in a fight with other students quite often. I was the one student who stayed in during recess and drew on the dry erase board. In a like manner, I found this very entertaining and I remember I felt extremely special because I was allowed to draw on the teacher’s board.
When recess was over I was sent back to my desk surrounded by bookshelves. I could listen to the class and hear the conversations but I was never a part of the program. All I had to do was stare at the wall and the back of the bookshelves which surrounded me. I wasn’t allowed to have toys, draw, or even leave my desk until recess. Usually, I did leave my desk but it was only to sit on the floor if I thought I could get away with it.
I am sure that many people enjoy memories of their earlier days. One of the strangest memories, which my mother remembers as well, is that of how I recieved my name. I am sure that I must have been less than two at the time.
Just outside the front door to the left of our single-wide trailer, if you were walking out, was a picnic table. This particular day was bright and sunny. My mother was sitting on the bench watching me play. She was probably smoking a cigarette, as she was a heavy smoker. I remember that she told me to come to her and so I did. She pointed to the other bench and told me to sit down.
She asked me, “have you ever thought about what you want your name to be?” Of course, I had no idea what she meant so I said no. She said, “your name is what you want me to call you when I need you,” she continued, which still didn’t mean very much to me. “It can be whatever you want,” she informed me. I thought about all the possibilities. Anything? “What’s your favorite thing"?” she asked me. So I said “bananas.” Of course this was not going to work. “How about Jason?” she asked. I said ok. And with that I went back to playing.
Now, to be clear, that was not exactly how I got my name but it is how I was informed of my name. It turns out that back in 1983-1984 my mother and father were lying on the couch watching TV. They were watching the Friday the 13th movie, probably The Final Chapter, about the serial killer whose name was none other than Jason Voorhees.
My mother and father were having an argument over what my name was going to be. My father was pretty set on Elton which, considering his homophobia, is rather ironic. My mother wasn’t having it. She wasn’t naming her son Elton. Probably because it was after a homosexual. So, as the movie progressed they both agreed on Jason.
I also remember around this time when I was informed of my name, my mother pacing the floors and sing nursery rhymes to me, as I have already mentioned. The one rhyme I remember the most was the one about the baby that was in the top of a tree. Then the wind blew and the baby would fall out.
I had to be the most terrified little child who ever existed. It was truly frightening. But frightening was a cornerstone of my early life. I really didn’t understand anything that was going on around me. But somehow I did manage to get a name out of it all. It is only to my surprise I am sure that I came to be called Jason after a serial killer rather than Bananas.
END
Awesome, Lovely pictures Jason.