Sex Ed From The Cops

Last night was a bit of a strange one for me. I’ve never had an honest-to-God flashback about anything in my life. Then what was actually a rather retarded thing went and gave me one.

I found out last night that a recent acquaintance of mine was going around behind my back trying to dig up dirt on me or see if I have any “hidden” secrets or motives concerning one of my best friends (who they are semi-friends with also).

For some reason this got me really, really mad.

I sat in my chair as I was reaming this acquaintance, as well as the person they were trying to exact dirt from, and tried to think about why I was reacting the way I was. I never did anything wrong. I never did anything even remotely inappropriate by almost any standard. This was just someone being a jackass, and it was really getting to me.

As I mulled over things in my mind a thought popped into my mind. “This is just like when mom and dad used to blame me for stuff that I didn’t do, which I later ended up doing.”

Back in my teenage years, my parents were accusing me of drinking well before I had ever drank. In their eyes I was already a seasoned smoker before I ever tried a cigarette. My dad used to accuse me of doing drugs way back when I was Mr. Anti-Drugs.

My train of thought progressed back even farther to events that happened 17 years ago when I was eight years old. Events that I had totally buried and forgotten for a very long. Events that I thought were a dead part of my past, but apparently were still alive.

You see, when I was eight years old my parents were the managers of the townhomes that we lived in. Less than six months after we moved in, because the previous managers quit and moved out, my parents began having trouble with a couple who had already lived there and who had applied for the job.

Being as how they had lived there for a while already, they knew most of the people in the neighborhood and were fairly well-liked. So after a few attempts to get my parents fired had failed, they tried a new tactic.

They went to the police and said that I had sexually abused their kids.

I remember when my parents first tried to ask me if I had really done anything. Being as how they hadn’t given me “the talk” then, they were asking things like, “Have you ever touched any of the kids?” and things like that. I was like, “No.” I didn’t really know why they were asking.

After they got done, they told me that we had to go to the place where they do the driver’s licenses (the county courthouse) and a person from Social Services and some police needed to ask me some questions too. They said I didn’t need to be afraid, and I should just tell them the truth.

Easier said than done people. I was eight years old and was going to be questioned by the cops and I was pissing my pants. Yet I had grown up never showing fear or sorrow or hurt, and so I swallowed it and went to see the police.

The Social Services chick and the cops hit a snag as soon as they started asking be questions. The first question was, “Do you know what “sexual abuse” is?” Of course, I didn’t and I let them know. That meant that before they could proceed, they had to give me a crash course in sexual education; both how to, and how not to, do it.

Ever have someone ask you if you’ve done something, which you haven’t, but just the fact that they are asking makes you feel guilty? Yeah well, I was eight years old, being questioned by the cops, getting a sex ed lesson, and that’s exactly how I felt. I was a depraved little dude with a hidden side that was composed of the things that serial killers were made of.

As much as I wanted to run away, to cry, to stop feeling guilty for something I had never even conceived of doing, I just sat there and answered their questions as matter-of-factly as I could. But everything that I felt, everything I wished I could do, everything I wish I could run away from somehow came slamming back to reality last night. Something triggered it, and it hit me like a freight train.

In the end, it was discovered that the people accusing me of abusing their kids had actually abused their own kids (I learned in later years that the abuse involved broomsticks, rubber gloves, and a shop vac, among other things) in an effort to produce “evidence” to implicate me, and thus get my parents fired.

The man who was the ringleader of the whole thing, although he wasn’t trying to get my parents job, was eventually convicted of raping and murdering a woman (stabbed her 20-some times) while her infant daughter was five feet away (it took over ten years for them to charge him with that). He is currently trying to appeal his conviction on a technicality.

I guess I just have a really low tolerance for being falsely accused of things.

Anyhow, I wrote a really short entry last night hinting at all this. I woke up this morning and erased it because I figured this was all stupid. But here I am writing a whole entry about it.

I suppose stranger things have happened.

*
“Satan, you know where I lie
Gently I go into that good night
All our lives get complicated
Search for pleasures overrated
Never armed our souls
For what the future would hold
We were innocent
*
Angels, lend me your might
Forfeit all my lives to get just one right
All those colors long since faded
All our smiles were confiscated
Never were we told
We’d be bought and sold
We were innocent
*
This prayer is for me tonight
This far down that line and still ain’t got it right
And while confessions not yet stated
Our next sin is contemplated
Never did we know
What the future would hold
Or that we’d be bought and sold
We were innocent.”
*
Fuel