Althouse: "My first gym class scares me. The other kids seem to know what to do."

May 24, 2015

"My first gym class scares me. The other kids seem to know what to do."

"They can climb ropes, hurl themselves at footballs and shriek with delight. I’m more of a ‘watching-from-the-sidelines’ kind of kid. But Mr Lee, our teacher, doesn’t seem to mind. He keeps giving me encouraging, kind looks. Like he knows I’m a bit self-conscious but he’s on my side and doesn’t mind at all. It’s all unspoken, but it feels clean, defined, safe. I find myself looking towards him more and more during the class...."

22 comments:

madAsHell said...: That guy still has issues with sexuality. Figure it out Hattie, he's going to leave you for a guy.; 5/24/15, 11:50 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: If Cumberbatch and Fry are his buds, it's likely that MAH has it right.; 5/24/15, 12:15 PM
Gahrie said...: After reading that, your response is an attack on that abused soul?

Shame on you.; 5/24/15, 12:19 PM
rhhardin said...: Child sexual abuse was the great ratings discovery of the 70s.

There's a huge market for it.

It didn't exist in the 60s, when child abuse but not specifically sexual abuse was discovered.

Neither was on the radar in the 50s and before.

Somehow the public got along without it, back then.; 5/24/15, 12:42 PM
Leslie Graves said...: Completely agree with @Gahrie.

Thanks for posting this story and I'm grateful to him for sharing it.

Tough to read. The part about Bach is very touching.; 5/24/15, 1:03 PM
John henry said...: That snippet sounds like lazlo; 5/24/15, 1:15 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: @ Cracker: If a man has a gay friend, and a straight friend who played a gay character in a movie, that means he's gay? I don't follow.; 5/24/15, 2:03 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Parents, the lesson is clear. If you want to keep your sons from getting Sanduskied, steer them towards music and arts, and away from sports.; 5/24/15, 2:05 PM
Michael K said...: Grooming I think it is called.

I just don't know if this is more common now or more talked about.

English private ("public") schools are notorious for this but at an older age.

Most of the priesthood scandals were about sexual relations with older kids. Only one that I read about was pure pedophilia.; 5/24/15, 2:39 PM
Dr.D said...: This is sad, but it is also not very interesting. There are lots of screwed up souls in this world, but that does not make them interesting.; 5/24/15, 3:16 PM
David said...: That is an amazing story. (I did read the whole thing.) It's quite possibly still littered with inaccuracies and evasions, conscious or otherwise, but he is quite brave and levelheaded about the whole thing.

There is scant mention of his family, who put him in the schools and left him there. That may be one of the evasions.

The truth of our own pasts is hard to know, and that seemingly known is hard to verify. I was abused as a child, not sexually but quite physically, and I still discover surprising ways that it affected me.

Scorn to his abuser but also to these:

The head of the junior school from back then saw it and got in touch with me. She told me she’d known that some kind of abuse was happening (even if, in her naivety, she hadn’t thought it was sexual), that she used to find me sobbing, blood on my legs, begging not to go back to gym class.
She’d gone to the head of the school who’d said, in true 1980s style: ‘Little Rhodes needs to toughen up. Ignore it.’ Which she did.; 5/24/15, 3:18 PM
Levi Starks said...: I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea that the judicial system can even pretend that it has any authority in the situation of a man telling the story of his own life.
That thy even contemplated it, versus dismissing it out of hand seems absurd to me.; 5/24/15, 4:27 PM
William said...: I don't mean this as a flip remark. The English public (private) school system provided a way for upper class parents to provide their children with an unhappy childhood. Bad food, cold baths in dirty water, endless bullying, and the occasional episode of caning and buggery. The English upper class effectively sent their kids away for a prison experience. Perhaps worse. Convicts don't have to memorize irregular verbs in dead languages......And it worked. All the deficits and misery of their childhood shaped these children into something formidable, something that could not be purchased with a happy childhood......I feel sorry for this man's suffering, but he is, on some levels, a success. Perhaps his success in life is due to his barbaric treatment as a child.; 5/24/15, 5:01 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: The futility of talking is paramount: best killing suffice.

Hard, dirty killing with all the blood the pedo's can give.

Public displays of corpses defiled as does pedoism require: Each and every time Rhhardin.; 5/24/15, 7:21 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: If homosexuality involves, as idiots and evil people propel, child rape at greater rates, to include the pederastic, then I want deTh via the victims family.

I want fathers with sons or daughters harmed to murder, in hot and cold and lukewarm blood.

Whatever to rid the world.; 5/24/15, 7:24 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Fernandez, as I Goddemned have taken my time to link and quote, has disproved the Rhhardin bullsjit.

Jameson, Guiness, Ranger IPA, Dale's IPA, and most recently Wild Turkey might yet disprove me, and I stand with angels.; 5/24/15, 7:28 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: The levels amongst might not know, but their professional exisitence is entirely, righteously, based on the commoners (absolute) distrust with the Althouses.

This doesn't mean Althouse is innocent: the idea Althouse might need to misrepresent "Moby" to influence scares.; 5/24/15, 8:01 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I have thought millions of the greatest stories you've proclaimed told.

As did Gram Parson's.

And others.

Althouse is of this ilk, and I'll always wonder why.; 5/24/15, 8:55 PM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: "After reading that, your response is an attack on that abused soul?

Shame on you."

Observing that he may very well be gay is an attack? In your world perhaps, but not in mine. What happened to him was horrorific.; 5/24/15, 10:22 PM
Anonymous said...: @william. Do you define success as effectively abusing people in other countries and taking their resources? Then yeah, the UK public schools were great at turning upper ckass kids into abusers with psycho sexual issues.; 5/25/15, 3:26 AM
Anonymous said...: There wasn't "child abuse" pre-70s because it was accepted; the entire family structure could be abusive and absolutely hellish for children. Personally, I associate it with asshole dominance being tolerated and even idealized. All that changed and with it acceptable levels of abuse and even the framing of things as abuse or not.

The Stockholme Syndrome that develops around abuse within a family situation can pass it to another generation. Sometimes kids see no escape from it other than to grow into an abuser themselves to avoid being the victim.

Having said all that, my (athletic) dad was hit on by his gym teacher in high school. His solution was to punch him in the face and it worked. I wonder if any potential victims even try that with authority figures anymore?; 5/25/15, 3:39 AM
Gahrie said...: Observing that he may very well be gay is an attack?

Not necessarily, but accusing a married man of being gay, and predicting he will leave his wife is. Especially after reading an article about how he was raped and abused as a child.; 5/25/15, 5:00 AM