At the end of a Gravel Road

“The father had placed his young son on top of the
bookcase, and was urging the youngster to jump
down into his arms.  The boy hesitated; he was
frightened.
‘Come on, son, jump!  I’m here to catch you.’
Still the boy whimpered and hesitated.
‘Now look, I’m your father.  I’m telling you to jump.
I’ll catch you.’
Finally, the boy closed his eyes and jumped.  The
father didn’t catch him, and he hit the floor with a thud.
He looked up at his father with tears of pain in his eyes.
And the father said, ‘There, that’ll teach you never to
trust anybody!’

Any person who would do such a thing to a child, should
have their child taken away from them.  To scar a child like
that is inhumane in my opinion.  Who can a child trust if
they can’t trust their parents!  I don’t know if this was a
true story or not but I would not be surprised that similar
occurrences have happened.

The story was the opening paragraph of Harry Lorayne’s
eleventh chapter of his book, ‘Secrets of Mind Power’.

Now to go to the rest of the chapter in Harry Lorayne’s
book on ‘Mind Power‘ does seem anti-climatic and unrelated
to that disturbing story.  The chapter though is about trusting
people and I can sure see where someone would grow up
trusting no one after that treatment.

Hopefully anyone who had an abusive parent as that
‘father‘ would meet others who could assure that person
that all people aren’t like that ‘father‘. Whether you think so
or not, that is abusive behaviour, a child’s feelings are
very fragile.  They remember actions such as those
for the rest of their life.

Patricia

I love to read!  My love affair with books started back
when I was a small girl on the farm ten miles from town.
Neighbours about a mile away, ones with children anyway,
but only boys.  I do have two brothers who are just a
year older than myself and we had lots of adventures, but you
couldn’t always be playing outside.  So a good book took
us on other adventures in places we had never seen and
probably would never see, or so we thought anyway.

Since I have been working on the computer my reading has
declined to a certain extent.  Any time the opportunity arises
though I grab my book and read a few pages.

One of the books I am reading, I’m afraid I tend to read more
than one at a time, is a book called ‘Biting the Moon’ by Martha
Grimes.  She isn’t one of my favorite authors but I don’t mind
reading her if the book sounds interesting.  She has a way with
words and this book is fairly good though when you really think
about it, it does seem a bit far fetched but then again…

Why I am writing about it is the one part in the book that I think
applies to many of us in how we handle situations in our life.  It
is about two teen-age girls and how they deal with what life has
handed them.  They seem very mature for their age and take life
in their stride maybe better than some adults. Maybe this small
segment of the story will touch some hidden part of you…

“It was as if Andi’s terrible experience had given her life focus.
Most girls would have been paralyzed with fear over what had
happened, but not Andi.  It was as if she had pulled the battered
parts of herself together and was now aimed, like an arrow, at
some destination that neither of them could see but that Mary
was afraid would shoot beyond her, land out of sight.

Yet Mary, who had not been violated, felt her own life to be a
tangle of conflicting needs.  Her sister, Angela, had always talked
about “centering”, finding one’s “center”. Mary felt she had no
center. She was the Scrabble letters spilled across the table,
letters she could not put together to spell anything sensible.  Andi, on the other hand, had mastered the game, as if magnetized, the letters flew together.

Mary envied such singleness of purpose, such determination.
Never to be deflected.  Andi had no doubts about what she was
doing, whereas Mary had nothing but doubts.  Andi might have doubts as to whether she’d succeed – whatever spelled success
for her – but no doubts about whether she should do it.”

Patricia

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