https://archive.md/WqWO4
"Whenever I ask my mother if she remembers the time in second grade when I
stabbed a kid in the head with a pencil, her answer is the same: “Vaguely.”
And I believe her. So much about my early childhood is vague. Some things I
remember with absolute clarity. Like the smell of the trees at Redwood National
Park and our house on the hill near downtown San Francisco. God, I loved that
house. Other things aren’t so clear, like the first time I sneaked into my
neighbor’s house when they weren’t home.
I started stealing before I could talk. At least, I think I did. By the time I
was six or seven I had an entire box full of things I’d stolen in my closet.
Somewhere in the archives of
People magazine there is a photo of Ringo Starr
holding me as a toddler. We’re standing in his backyard—not far from Los
Angeles, where my father was an executive in the music business—and I am
literally stealing the glasses off his face. I was not the first child to ever
play with a grown-up’s glasses. But based on the spectacles currently perched
on my bookshelf, I’m pretty sure I was the only one to swipe a pair from a
Beatle.
To be clear: I wasn’t a kleptomaniac. A kleptomaniac is a person with a
persistent and irresistible urge to take things that don’t belong to them. I
suffered from a different type of urge, a compulsion brought about by the
discomfort of apathy, the nearly indescribable absence of common social
emotions like shame and empathy.
I didn’t understand any of this back then. All I knew was that I didn’t feel
things the way other kids did. I didn’t feel guilt when I lied. I didn’t feel
compassion when classmates got hurt on the playground. For the most part, I
felt nothing, and I didn’t like the way that “nothing” felt. So I did things to
replace the nothingness with…something."
Via Tess.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
