you aren’t nice to them because adults get to punish you if they
want and you can’t stop them. I knew I had to be nice to the
man in the movies because he was an adult and I had to talk to
adults in a certain w ay because I was a child and I got punished
if I didn’t but I also wanted to act like an adult so they would
leave me alone so I had to talk t o him like an adult and not cry
or be stupid or act silly or act like a baby or be rude or raise my
voice or run away or be scared like a baby. Y ou had to say
mister or sir and you had to be polite and if you wanted to be
grown up you had to talk quiet and be reasonable and say
quiet, intelligent things in a certain quiet, reasonable way.
Children cried. Y ou didn’t cry. Little babies screamed like
ninnies. Y ou didn’t scream. Adults didn’t scream when
someone talked to them quietly. The man talked very quiet.
The man was very polite. I was too grown up to scream and
cry and then I would have had to leave the movie if I made
noise because you weren’t even allowed to make any noise in a
movie. You weren’t allowed to whisper. I couldn’t understand how come the man kept talking once the movie started
because I knew you weren’t allowed to talk during it. M y
daddy hated for me to cry. He walked away in disgust. M y
momma yelled at me but my daddy went away. Adults said I
was a good child or I was very mature for my age or I had
poise. Sometimes they said I was a nice girl or a sweet child or
a smart, sweet child with such nice manners. It was a big act on
my part. I waited for them to go away so I could go
somewhere and do what I wanted but I wanted them to like
me. M y momma made me talk with respect to all adults no
matter what they did. Sometimes a teacher was so stupid but
m y momma said I had to talk with respect or be quiet and I
wasn’t allowed to contradict them or even argue with them at
all. One teacher in regular school made her pets stand behind
her when she was sitting at her desk in the front o f the room
and you had to brush o ff her collar, just stand there behind her
for fifteen minutes or a half hour or longer and keep brushing
her collar on her shoulders with your open hands, palms
down, stroking all the whole w ay from her neck to her arms.
She sat at her desk and we would be taking a test or writing
something or answering her questions and she would say
someone had to come up and stand behind her and she wore
one o f those fuzzy collars you put on top o f sweaters and
someone had to stand behind her chair facing the class and
with their hands keep brushing the fuzzy collar down,
smoothing it down, with one stroke from her neck to her
shoulder, the left hand had to stroke the left side o f her collar
and the right hand had to stroke the right side o f her collar, and
it had to be smooth and in rhythm and feel good to her or she
would get mean and say sarcastic things about you to the class.
