The Red Button

The Red Button

“Don’t jump in puddles. You’ll get your Sunday dress dirty.”

“Don’t run down the stairs in stocking feet. You’ll fall.”

“Don’t dawdle. You’ll be late for school.”

“Don’t gulp your milk. You’ll lose your appetite.”

“Don’t suck your finger. You’ll make your teeth crooked.”

Now, at the age of seventy-two, I still hear those long-ago parental warnings and ponder over my stubborn resistance whenever I was told NOT to do something. Rarely an openly defiant child, my disobedience was furtive.

I recall the day I came home from Sunday School plastered in mud. I was sent to my room.

I tumbled down a flight of stairs in my socks and cracked my coccyx bone. Lower back pain still plagues me.

My habit of entering school late robbed me of coveted recesses playing Double Dutch.

When bloated from a huge glass of milk, I still had to clean my plate. “We had to live on rations during the war!” my father bellowed.

I was forced to wear itchy woolen gloves to bed when my thumb sucking created buck teeth, The dental remedy of binding my two front teeth together with a foul-tasting elastic band  was cruel torture. I had to wear it in my mouth for weeks.

I wonder if “learning the hard way” is hard-wired into human nature.

When I was five, I especially hated rainy days. Mom’s watchful eye prevented puddle hopping and gutter dancing, pastimes I could only enjoy if she were preoccupied.

Damp days were basement days. Unfinished, the clammy cement floor and walls, dusty workbench, coal bin and furnace cast shadows in the gloom. Alone, I worried about the boogeyman, but this was the only place in the house I was allowed to bounce my red, white and blue rubber ball.  

“Stay away from the pickle jars.”

For once, I obeyed, not wanting to deal with shattered glass.

At the foot of the furnace was a gauge with a red button. “Don’t ever, ever touch that button,” my father warned.

“Why?”

Don’t ask silly questions. Just do as you’re told!”

For awhile, I ignored the siren call of that enticing, bright button. Something about the urgent tone in my father’s voice deterred my impulses. My self-control gave out, however, one long, Thanksgiving weekend. Three tedious days of torrential rainfall had created a huge resentment. I tended to blame bouts of poor weather on my omnipotent parents, believing that they had the power to deliberately withhold my opportunity to play outside in the sunshine.

Sulking, exiled to the basement to play, and sick and tired of the stupid bouncy ball, I stared at the red button, overwhelmed by an excruciating urge to banish the boredom, and satisfy my curiosity. What could possibly be so dangerous about a little button that was obviously there for a reason? It was an intolerable itch in need of scratching,

In slow motion, I placed my index finger over the button, and hovered, shaking. Taking a gulp of air, I lowered my hand and pushed. Waited. Nothing. Just the usual, monotonous hum of the bulky contraption that sometimes clicked off, stood quietly for awhile, and then clicked on again. I stood for an eternity, longing for some excitement.

Disappointed, I finally returned to my ball game. I had eventually mastered how to bounce the ball off the wall and turn around once before catching it. Time for more practice.

When the sun set, I was called upstairs to dinner. Mom wouldn’t let me have any milk until I had finished all my sausages, potatoes and cauliflower, a prerequisite for dessert.

As I was diving into my chocolate pudding, there was a WUMPH! The house shook, my glass of milk wobbled. Daddy steadied his beer.

“Did you touch the button on the furnace?” he roared. His flaming eyes burned through mine. I shook my head in terrified denial. Then, he turned his rage on my older brother, who argued more and got in trouble with Daddy a lot.

“I didn’t touch anything!” he cried.

“Go to your room!”

My poor brother stomped up the stairs, wrongly accused, abandoned by a lying coward. I sat at the table, mute and ashamed.

Dad raced downstairs. When he returned, he was shouting. “The whole bloody house could have blown up!”

When I was excused from the table, I scuttled upstairs, shaky, and nauseated. My brother’s protests went unheeded, and I never dared to own up.

Three years later, when I was in sixth grade, the students were routinely lined up, escorted to the basement and instructed to crouch under tables. It was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tables were supposed to protect us if a dreaded button was pushed by some evil Communist “tyrant,” as horrible as Hitler, to fire nuclear bombs at us.

There were commercials on TV about purchasing bomb shelters. When I begged my parents to buy one, my father barked, “Those bloody things wouldn’t work! The whole city, in fact the whole country would be entirely incinerated!”

I realized that the exercise of crawling under tables at school was useless.  I also hoped and prayed that the terrifying and all-powerful button wasn’t as easy to push as the one on the furnace had been.

One stupid choice. Scary.

The world didn’t blow up. I eventually forgot my terror and became entrenched in adolescent concerns.

“Don’t take up cigarette smoking, like me. It’s a terrible habit,” warned my mother.

“Watch your intake of cake and cookies. You don’t want to get fat.”

“Stay in school so you get a decent job.”

Predictably, I overindulged in calorie-loaded junk food and suffered the cruelty of taunting peers. I stole cigarettes and practiced inhaling until I no longer puked. It didn’t take long before I had to steal money to fund my addiction. Eighteen years later, I would finally kick the habit.

I quit high school at the age of seventeen, and endured a series of horrific, boring, back-breaking, and low-paying jobs for two years before eventually smartening up and heeding the guidance of my parents. I graduated from high school and university.

I would like to say that, at that point in my life, I consistently made better choices, but I still had many tough lessons to learn.

My long-time therapist has lovingly teased me, calling me the “cast-iron frying pan lady.” She is referring to the way I often continue to get bashed over the head until finally making a change. To my credit, I have greatly lessened the drama in my life. Old age craves serenity.