The Carrot on the Piano
2 x good + ADHD = bad
Let’s play a game. You be me for a minute.
You’re somewhere between ten and twelve. (Eleven? you ask. Can you be eleven? Yes, you can be eleven, why not.) You’re on the sofa with your brothers and sister, watching something funny on the telly—let’s say Scooby -Doo.
Your mum bursts into the room. You can tell from her bright red face that she’s about to explode.
“WHO LEFT THE CARROT ON THE PIANO?”
“Not me!!” you say, everyone says, absolutely fucken terrified.
“Not me!” is automatic, like jumping out of the way of a speeding car. No thought involved. Too panicked to think. The words catapult you to safety. You’ve no idea what she said, what you said, only that she’s bloody furious, and you don’t want to be the ‘who’ in that sentence.
“WHO DID IT? ONE OF YOU DID IT!”
Slowly, the initial shock subsides and your brain starts catching up.
“WHO LEFT THE CARROT ON THE PIANO?”
Oh no. Memories surface. It was you. You did it. You left the carrot on the piano.
But you’ve already said you didn’t, and now it’s too late. With no one fessing up, she’s even more enraged.
“RIGHT! YOU’RE ALL GOING DOWN TO THE BASEMENT. AND DON’T THINK YOU’LL BE GETTING ANY TEA UNTIL WHOEVER IT IS OWNS UP.”
You and your siblings traipse off to the basement. For clarity, this basement isn’t a damp, spider-infested hole with a single lightbulb but where your bedrooms are—a semi-basement with carpets, lampshades, and beds. Think Seventies decor with squared crocheted coverlets and macramé plant holders.
You gather in one room. There’s pacing and swearing. Your older brother Peter, whom you adore, is the main person pacing and swearing.
“Who the hell did it? Come on!”
“Yeah, come on!” you echo weakly, unconvincing even to yourself.
There’s no way out. You’re done for. Your mother and stepfather (undoubtedly the engine behind this drama) have turned you against each other, and there’s no good ending. Not only are you in trouble with your mum, but your siblings too. Your only allies are ready to tear you apart.
“Whoever the bloody hell it is,” says Peter, “I’m going to kill them.”
Why? Because you didn’t admit it right away. Because you didn’t even remember it was you. Because there was only a split second to recall and make a decision, and your fear made it for you. Now, the more seconds pass, the deeper your trouble becomes, and your beloved brother, the only person who seems to actually like you, wants to kill you.
Because… wait, hold up, record scratch, what was that? Because
you left a half-eaten carrot on the piano.
You absolute monster!
Let’s rewind. I’ll step back into myself now; you’re relieved from duty.
Some hours earlier.
At that point very much a Good Girl, I am wandering the house, eating a carrot—a sanctioned healthy snack. It is a chunky ole carrot and can’t be wolfed in one go. Bored (the default state of a Seventies childhood), I decide to do my piano practice. Since Presto by G.B. Pescetti cannot be played with one hand, I put the carrot down on top of the piano. Finishing my practice, I wander off, and the seeds of my destruction are sewn.
Maybe kids do this kind of thing all the time, but most adults grow out of it. I’ve done it all my life, only lately understanding it was due to ADHD brain wiring.
Halfway through one task, I start another; halfway through that, I get distracted by something else. Objects associated with these half-finished tasks are left strewn across my day, and rendered invisible.
Looking back, I was a Good Girl doing TWO good things—eating a carrot and doing my piano practice—both thoroughly approved of by my mother. Yet, because I failed to complete one of them, I got the bollocking of all bollockings. Somehow, two good things plus ADHD equals bad.
I walked out of that room without saying a word to my brothers and sister. Better to get it in the neck from Mum than from people I loved. (This sounds harsh, but I during this era, I stopped loving Mum, because it felt like she’d stopped loving me. I loved her before and I loved her after). And that’s where the memory ends.
I don’t remember the punishment. As they say about some official investigations, the process was the punishment. My mother’s rage, bursting onto our relaxed sofa laughter. Accidentally telling a lie. Feeling trapped in a terrifying bind that worsened with every second. Hearing someone I loved say he’d kill me. And all for two tiny mistakes that I couldn’t erase.
A forgotten carrot. An autonomic denial.
These, and what followed—a lifelong fear of getting things wrong—were the punishments. A lifelong fear which, incidentally, walked me into an abusive marriage. But weirdly, it was also this experience that made me some kind of child criminal. If you’re going to be punished for being good, be wicked. At least then, when you’re punished, you deserve it—and maybe you had some fun! So, after the Carrot on the Piano, I stopped being a Good Girl. I used my boredom more creatively. I wrote childish porn and posted it through doors. I started setting fire to things.
Telling such stories repeatedly helps you understand them. Sometimes people laugh with you (healing). People with dysfunctional childhoods bond over shared weirdnesses. And sometimes, someone asks a question you’ve never considered, and you discover something startlingly true.
Like: why did my mother punish me for leaving a carrot on the piano? Why was she enraged by something so trivial?
Because — and bear in mind it took me nearly five decades to work it out — she, too, was in an abusive relationship. Our stepfather didn’t like children much, and he especially didn’t like us. So she spent the whole long marriage trying to placate him. And that’s when I realised that in my first marriage, I didn’t just marry my father (trying to squash an independent, clever career woman into traditional wifedom) but my stepfather too. My mother took two marriages to work through this crap, and never got free of it; I did it in one. How very efficient of me!
If only I’d had such efficiency around snacking and piano practice.
This week I have:
Caught up with friends from New Zealand
Moved an extremely large and spiky plant (with ropes and help)
Run away to a yurt in the woods! I’ll read and answer your comments when I get back.
Over to you
What’s the title of your defining childhood tale?
Do you want to tell it?
Mine would likely be called Fear of Flying but not for the expected reasons. I was nine and had been confined to home for the summer since I had developed rheumatic fever, a debilitating condition when it strikes.
I missed playing outside. As a result I began developing my inner playmate. At one point I imagined I was the king of my own realm and even went so far as to draw a map of it. I also pretended I was on an ocean liner as I looked out the windows, watching the world go by.
So it was no surprise to me that when in the fall I was finally able to get outside I had a good deal of stored imagination. All the neighbor kids were glad to see me again.
However during those three or four months I developed not only a sense of self but a comfort in being alone.
One day I was out in the autumn wind with falling leaves and pretended I was a big bird, an eagle, hawk, vulture. I don’t know.
I was flapping my wings as I was running, imagining myself soaring over the land (grass as trees) below. One of the neighbor kids came out to play but, as he later told me, thought better of it after watching me.
It wasn’t until later that I found out he and others he told were convinced that my disease had somehow changed my personality, that I had transformed into someone ‘girly’. Naturally I felt ostracized and was confirmed in my view when I was regularly ridiculed and kept out of activities which, in turn, only led to more alone time.
To make a long story more crumpled this outer attitude towards me started infiltrating my fourth grade classmates so that by the following year I was constantly reminded of my otherness by not only them but by my teacher who seemed to enjoy bullying me. This resulted in a number of after school fights where people I once thought were friends would instead show up to watch me get beat up by three or four guys. I got the best of one of them but the rest took offense and made sure I left with bruises.
The only good things I learned from all of this was a strong sense of independence and enjoyment being by myself and, years later, the knowledge that, yes, I was gay and proud of it.
Fascinating that you have spent so much of your adult life contributing enormously on the authorship question, asking, "Who did it?" "Which one of you did it?". "Why would the author deny doing it?" " "What punishment would the author have, unjustly, have endured? " "Who, of those he loved, would have killed him for what he put on the boards? " " Why was so much covered up, why did he become, anonymous, not owning up to his amazing talent? ". I think your recent post on "Where is the evidence" sums it up. When a group, or peers, or a parental or power figure goes off the rails with impunity, you learn, as an adult, to rely on evidence to reply. Fascinating to see how bullying, intimidation, and injustice can birth a warrior. Thank you for you bravery! Elizabeth Rodgers, J. D.