4. Mama’s Nice Little Man

And so it was that I became inexorably typed and trapped as Mama’s nice little man, performing in and for an adult world, with no opportunities to play juvenile rôles. I was indeed a little old man.

Today I find myself viewing with impatience much of the nonsense taught by modern psychology concerning the lifelong effects of some fright or mistreatment in early childhood. Unquestionably such incidents have been ridiculously overemphasized. Many an ordinary, run-o’-the-mine rapscallion—if his family had plenty of money—has been defended in court by psychiatrists who had found that at the age of three he had been roughly handled by an older child with the result that it had made him anti-social. To most of this modernistic prattle I am definitely allergic.

But I do believe that the early training I received at home had much to do with making a very solemn child of me. I was regularly taken to the Wednesday evening prayer meeting, which was patronized only by old folks. At the Communion Service, a morbid event, even when conducted by my habitually lighthearted papa, the nice little man who had been confirmed at seven would come forward and line up alongside his elders and try to look appropriately depressed as he sipped the blood of the Crucified One. All this was a tragic mistake, made by my mama, with the very finest of intentions.

It is not much wonder if I was not much of a success on the school playground. When the kids “chose up” for a ball game I was among the last to be named, if at all. Mostly I sat and watched, and when the team I favored stole a base or batted in a run I never jumped up and hollered. I was pleased, but not noisy.

Of course there were certain compensations, though not enough to make up for a lost childhood. Under expert and diligent home guidance I learned to read and write much earlier than the average child of that period. And it certainly is not boasting if I should add that at six I probably could have taught the three R’s to the average child of twelve in the progressive public schools of today, if the current clamor of disgusted parents is significant. And, too, I achieved in childhood a sort of intuitional understanding of the adult mind and mood, somewhat like the sixth sense of a not-too-highly pedigreed collie, in the ability to spot “on contact” (as the radio plugsters say of their deodorizing soap) a stranger who could be trusted—or should be avoided.

I was smothered with maternal supervision. I was almost old enough for prep school before I was allowed to go out of our front gate without explaining in advance where I was going and reporting on my return where I had been. When I was twelve and all the Sunday Schools in the township were converging on a beautiful grove, a few miles away, for a picnic all the kids of our church rode in a gaily decorated float, drawn by six horses with tall red plumes on the bridles; all but me and my little brother, who rode in the back seat of the family surrey. My sister had been lucky enough to ride with her schoolmates. But it was safer for me to keep out of that big wagon. Suppose the horses took fright at the band, and ran away! It is a wonder that the kids did not despise me: maybe they did.

But, getting back to me when I was six, there was at least one person in Monroeville to whom I became something quite other than Mama’s nice little man. A certain Mrs. Morland had good reasons for knowing that I was not a little man, nor was I nice. I was a disgusting little monster! If you insist I shall tell you about it, but it is not a pleasant story. If it sickens you, please remember that you asked for it.

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