EARHART'S STORY: Little Match Girl/10 Ft Tall & Bulletproof
First of all, guys, I was a preemie; a six months' preemie weighing in at around 3 pounds. This was when oxygen incubators were used in the Fifties. I was placed in one for six months and will probably never know the extent to which my prematurity shaped my life. My "lazy" eye was obvious and I felt like I was walking around underwater all the time. That in itself was daunting, especially when nascent bipolar behavior was developing inside me. I was doing about MACH III most of the time. I guess I was so glad to get out of that incubator I came out with a rocket in my diaper.
I have strong childhood memories and can remember, when I was about three, my mother and sister telling me I was acting "weird." I was becoming too loud, whiny, demanding and a tantrum-thrower. I don't know what could have caused the change. Had it been my hernia surgery at two? (I tried to pick up the washing machine). . .Was it the six months' separation from my parents?
Nobody knew.
Inevitable comparisons to that point where things come true were made between me and my "weird" grandmother on my father's side. Grandma was guilty of a number of sins, such as sending back food in a restaurant if it wasn't right, sending back dirty glasses, and refusing to help my mother with a large dinner, saying "I can help or I can look pretty. And, by Gawd, I'm gonna look pretty!" My whole family thought she was "crazy" and pointed out on a daily basis how I was going to grow up and be just like her. a lonely old woman. This played on my abandonment issues bigtime. It still does.
It was quite a trip. The problem was, I loved my grandmother. She was larger than life, extremely flamboyant, and, of course, loud. She was different from anyone I had met in my life, and I often wonder if the parental injunctions figure less than my total awe of her. The downside was if my parents thought she was crazy because she didn't fit into their niche, then I had to be "crazy" to be compared with her.
That family dilemma had so overloaded my brain that I predictably started creating havoc in kindergarten. I refused direction and "acted out"--but our family doctor knew just the ticket to "straighten me out and fly me right". . .
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