Watch people inflicting misery on others. Keep a close eye on their
faces particularly as they turn from the scene or when they believe that
nobody is watching them. It might not be a full smile, just a gleam in
the eye or a raising of the right side of the lip.
I wrote a kids' story the other day, about a young girl who has to face down the 'Aunties of Despair'. It's a fantasy in which the Aunties of Despair feed off the misery of others. They are sort of like emotional vampires.
Blood doesn't go down well with parents who are thoughtful about what their kids read, although it seems to go down well with kids who get to watch whatever they want because their parents just don't give a toss. Small wonder the kids are growing up giving violent expression to their impulses. Vampires are also fast becoming passe, matinee stuff.
I opted for a bloodless approach. In order to get their sustenance, the Aunties have to create misery and unhappiness. My protagonist rises above it, and comes out the other side in a better condition. The Aunties are effectively banished for a bit but, as we all know, they will return.
I was quite proud of the premise of the story, but the more I think about it, the more I realise that it is not really in the realm of fantasy.
Taken literally, the Aunties of Despair are among us.
In the course of writing the story, I remembered an Afrikaans teacher from primary school. Her approach to education was to thrash as many people as possible in every class. The beatings were interspersed with long, moralising lectures which became all the more nightmarish because they just delayed the inevitable hiding.
Even the best and brightest got their turns. She made sure of it. Sometimes it was just a whim with no reason whatsoever. "You. Come here."
In a thirty minute period there would be something like ten minutes of actual lesson and the rest of it was nightmare, misery and nausea. She wasn't unusual in that regard. Many of the other teachers were damaged goods as well.
What made her stand-out was that she did not hide the pleasure that she took from what she did: the sick, happy smile, radiance put on display for the entire class to see. Parents put a stop to the excess, eventually*. I imagine, from recent reports of teachers being beaten or charged by parents for using corporal punishment on their kids, that there were others like her, and that the memories are still raw.
I'm getting off topic. That teacher was probably the most visible example of emotional vampires, so drained of humanity, that they have to take spiritual and emotional nourishment from the pain and discomfort that they inflict on others.
Her smile was not and is not unusual. Watch people inflicting misery on others, be it physical or emotional. Keep a close eye on their faces particularly as they turn from the scene or when they believe that nobody is watching them. It might not be a full smile (though it very often is), just a gleam in the eye or a raising of the right side of the lip. That's one clear sign of someone feeding off misery, and that is the red light for abuse.
It's a shocking eye opener, more so for the fact that we accept it and turn a blind eye to it.
We become habituated to it early. People do it to us and after a while it becomes accepted as normal, even though the discomfort is still there on some kind of subconscious level.
Some become expert at turning people into prey, the kind who learned their lessons well from the repetitive behaviour of parents, teachers, schoolyard bullies and apparent friends. They store their opportunities, build towards the feeding frenzy. These are the most damaged. Others use it on a low level: an occasional slight or a wanton moment of cruelty or spite to fill a moment of emptiness.
The best defense begins with recognition, which can be read on faces and in repetitive behaviour patterns. There's another sign though. These people try to build dependency and dominance, often with money, gifts, promises, knowledge and social influence, having no love to offer. Recognising the weakness, they will try to feed on it repetitively.
Once that recognition is in place, it is possible to ignore it, and hope that the person is not too thick to notice that his or her behaviour is having no effect. The most likely strategy though is to avoid or cut that person out of your life entirely.
The most important thing is to watch and defend kids who are less able to withstand and weather the onslaughts. Very often they don't have a choice of the people around them. Aside from the happiness and security of childhood, which ought to be sacred, it is awful to think that children may be transformed into human parasites as well.
* She was subsequently limited to four formal stand-up-and-bend-over hidings per period, a fact about which she was most upset as she told us she 'couldn't do her duty'. Four hidings, seven periods a day, five days a week. You do the maths. She made up for it with the informal hands-out variety while walking up and down the rows. This method of educating was the Christian National Education way, and the numbers were normal. Rods weren't spared. They were replaced when they broke.
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