like distilled depression

[derien]

I don't know what it is about the aftertast of milk of magnesia, but it tastes like pure, crushing, depression to me. I must have some bad association with it, further back than I can remember.

I've wasted my evening reading stuff on Jasper Fforde's site when I should have been packing my overnight bag, because tomorrow evening I'll be headed for a hotel in Chelsea, Mass. I guess I'd better go do that. :P

Comments

[kryptyd]

My mother used to use it to check if I was really sick or just trying to get out of school. Her: "oh you're sick?" *brandishes the dreaded blue bottle* Me: "no, I'm fine!!" *runs away*

I can't remember what it tastes like now but I know it once used to strike fear into me!

[derien]

Wow, I think if I were a kid ANYTHING could be wrong with me and I would go to school if that stuff were waved at me! OTOH, who knows? Maybe my Mom gave me that stuff a few times, because I used to skip school because I was hopelessly depressed when I was a kid, I was teased and bullied and the thought of going to school made my stomach hurt.

[kryptyd]

Why are kids so cruel? And I don't mean that in the rhetorical, why WHY sort of way, I mean really why? I suppose it's something to do with them asserting a power they have just discovered that they have, like terrible two year olds and the word "no". Then again, they seem not to grow out of it for their entire school lives. No doubt some of them go on to be bullies in the workplace too. (No "workplace" for my bullies of course. They are all in abusive relationships on the dole with ten kids or dead from the drink or drugs, as my mother correctly promised. However it gives me no pleasure/recompense, which she incorrectly implied it would).

Does this happen everywhere? Are there countries where a slightly weird* child's young life won't be blighted by bullying?

*Substitute weird for all the other "reasons" too.

[derien]

It's a mystery to me, though I suppose you're right, it must have to do with exercising power. When I was younger it was mostly girls and I never found a way to get them to stop. The boys, in high school, I could get to stop bugging me and adore me simply by asking them, "What's bothering you?" And THEN, wow, I heard the stories and was shown the cigarette burns their fathers inflicted on their arms. It's probably the same for the girls, really. Kids are pretty powerless and controlled.

(Edited to sort out some of my comma and period issues. :P)