I was usually a well-behaved child but I did get into fights with my older sister. Maybe they were her fault. It felt like they were all her fault.
So, one morning when I was about six, I was in my sister’s room. I guess we were playing although I don’t know if I had been invited to the room. A ball was involved, a football, in fact. She threw it and it hit me in the face.
I was stunned and hurt. Through my tears I yelled, “You bastard!”
This word was a new addition to my vocabulary. I knew by the reaction it got on the schoolyard that it was a strong word, probably worse than poopyhead, however the reaction it got in my home was unexpected.
My usually easy-going mother was suddenly not so easy going. In fact, she was enraged. I’d never seen her that way. The throwing of the ball was forgotten. My pain wasn’t noticed. She grabbed me and a cake of Ivory soap and, as they say, washed my mouth out with soap.
I don’t recall anything but the taste of soap and her anger. If she explained her rage, I didn’t understand. I was confused and hurting, both from the ball and from the soap. I was feeling guilty, wondering what I had done that was so wrong.
I had to think it through in my own six-year-old way, with only my knowledge of playground insults to guide me. The lesson I worked out was this: Don’t call your sister a bastard. Females are bitches, males are bastards.
I’d made a gender mistake.
About:
Wendy Freborg is a retired social worker and former editor whose humor has appeared in Scalar Comet, American Bystander, Little Old Lady Comedy, and Defenestration. Her poetry (mostly less funny) has been published by Rat’s Ass Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and WestWard Quarterly. Her life includes a small family, enough friends and too many doctors.
Image Composition by Scalar Comet. Source photography via unsplash+
