Imagine being an 8-year old boy in 1984. You’re sporting Darth Vader Underoos to combat the humidity of a sweltering, summer afternoon. The stifling heat seems to congregate in the second-floor bedroom of a nondescript stucco house parceled between the main thoroughfare and the railway line serving New York City. Towering from floor to ceiling in your sanctuary are World War II-era planes that cover the wallpaper you like but didn’t pick. Trinkets of your kingdom cover a cherry-oak wooden dresser: treasured baseball cards, G.I. Joe action figures, 60-cent comic books, and a self-addressed post-card depicting the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A faux-wood AM/FM clock radio from Sears sits atop this altar; its grainy speaker forms your primary connection to the outside world.
Out of boredom, you turn the radio dial to “ON” at exactly the right time, as a song begins. This stroke of good luck bypassed an insufferable commercial jingle–courtesy of the local “mom and pop” hardware store. The afternoon’s heat and humidity are, briefly, overlooked. The room seemed energized by the song’s opening chords, reminiscent of the hymn “How Great Thou Art”, followed by the beat of a drum that sends chills down your spine. It is the first line that catches you off guard: “Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground”
The defiant voice entering my bedroom via the radio’s speaker was New Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen. In 1984 Bruce Springsteen’s career was backed by a catalog of albums loved by critics but overlooked by the public. His strong and defiant voice stood out from the rest of the radio line-up. He wasn’t singing about a red Corvette, a stalker named “Billie Jean,” or glamorizing the excesses of the ’80s. With “Born in the USA,” he shared a struggle familiar to many Americans. He sang about feeling wounded, jaded, and screwed over by the government in terms of the Vietnam War. While not a veteran, Springsteen conveyed empathy for friends who, either, never came home or did…and suffered. The song’s refrain on their behalf is fiery and defiant—“BOOOORN IN THE U—S—-A!!!!” Had you turned the radio on four-and-a-half minutes later, you might not encounter the song again for days.
As the final notes fade out, your awareness of the oppressive heat returns. The DJ coaxes you to stay tuned. The promise of another hit song looms but not “before the top of the hour, after a word from our sponsors.”
Hearing a great song on the radio in 1984 could stop your day. Thanks to the accessibility and power offered by the amalgams of the plastic and metal most of us carry in our pockets, the authority of the radio station’s DJ to create the “soundtrack” of our lives has since been diminished. In 2019, the significance of this moment could easily be overlooked. My children will never experience the aching anticipation of waiting two hours to finally hear their favorite song. Now, their experience in accessing music usually involves the electronic exchange of permissions and data: all executed by the single swipe of a fingertip. Worse, they commit sacrilege by blasting Greta Van Fleet on the way to soccer practice, blithely unaware that they sound exactly like Led Zeppelin. How dare they!
A child born in 1975 couldn’t possibly grasp the deeper meaning of the song–the history–on the first listen, especially if they didn’t know any Vietnam veterans. What came through, clearly, over the sound of the kick-drum were the next 10 words that summarized an experience I had been unable to describe: “end up like a dog that’s been beat too much.” The person my mom described as “some kind of bum,” actually wrote a compelling narrative. Moreover, he was on the radio, articulating an experience I couldn’t talk about–the realization, ground-breaking. Until then, I was starkly unaware other people could do that. Judging by the involuntary discharge of saltwater leaking from my eyes, his words had also pierced my thin armor. The epiphany that followed was simple: Does ‘it’ happen to other children, too?
The pattern was consistent. You are talking to your brother in the next bed instead of sleeping. Mom gets up off the couch. Exasperated footsteps make their way toward the kitchen. Quickly, you go under the sheet, remain still and try to slow your breathing. The sound of rattling kitchen utensils carries up the stairs, triggering overwhelming fear and the scary truth: ’it’ is going to happen. The center of your chest, which should feel warm and bright, shudders. Feet steadily trot up the stairs at a pissed-off rate, unaware of your internal struggle. The door opens. A dark silhouette reveals itself. A voice tears through the room’s stillness with grave instructions: pajama pants and underwear down and assume ‘the position.’ You strike a downward-facing-dog yoga pose, but with your knees bent and tucked under your torso.
At this point, the adage ‘boys don’t cry’ is forgone for a final appeal for clemency, hoping to downgrade ‘it’ to a verbal attack.
The best option is to face the wall, study the drawings of the airplanes, and wait. With more attention, inconsistencies in the artist’s work become apparent. For instance, only some of the propellers are drawn with black arcs to create the illusion of movement. All of the plane’s cockpits are empty. You assume the pilots are springing from their bunks at the sound of the air-raid siren. “This is not a drill!” The sound of the spoon, whistling through the air, follows. The bombing commences. The first wave targets the neighboring bed, occupied by your brother. After the perimeter has been ravaged by the initial attack, no defenses remain between you and the invading force. It is time to accept your fate.
The transfer of energy from wooden spoon to bare skin follows in stinging reverberation through nerves and gluteal muscles. When it ends, your body crawls underneath the sheet and remains frozen. In your head, you negotiate another type of surrender. Your 8-year old brain has one myopic strategy: counter the tirade from your internal voice that repeats, “YOU ARE BAD… and I can prove it!” Shame will compel you to make any concession, simply to end the hostile negotiations. Eventually, you submit and lay in bed with the monster, whose darkness pulsates in the center of your chest. The wooden spoon will eventually return to its kitchen counter to await its next deployment. Hopefully, it will involve scooping applesauce next time. Mom goes back to watching the newest episode of Dallas. Dad catches her up on what she missed but, otherwise, remains on the couch.
In our house, a pediatrician named Dr. Spock (not the much-beloved Vulcan on Star Trek) supposedly validated this type of intervention. At the time, many accepted his best-selling book, Baby and Child Care, as “the common-sense guide” to child-rearing. Passed down from a relative, a paperback copy of the seventh edition that depicted a smiling infant on the cover, always occupied the second shelf of our dining room bookcase. According to my mother, the book endorsed what we knew as “spanking.” Such discipline was OK, provided there existed a separation between parent and child by an instrument. As explained during a morning debriefing of the preceding night’s events, Dr. Spock’s book endorsed “spanking” because the disciplinarian could induce desired behavior without the child fearing the parent.
Based on my experience, there was a distinct absence of wisdom and parental guidance present during the periodic eruptions of angry parents, wielding wooden cooking utensils. Don’t wooden spoons belong next to the stove? As you might expect, my opinion of Dr. Spock’s guidelines and experience sank lower after his book found its way sandwiched between my buttocks and her hand. The force of that tattered paperback produced a sizable, compressive wave, leaving a more enduring reminder the next morning, compared to its counterpart.
Technical failure was another way of avoiding a spanking. It only happened once–courtesy of the spoon breaking apart upon contact with my brother’s behind. An autopsy showed a stress fracture caused by the decelerating forces caused by repetitive and unintended use.
The cost of my stay of execution was having to listen to my mother’s self-conscious laugh, as she held the broken pieces in her hands. After the wooden spoon was replaced, my dad spoke-up on our behalf. He told her she should stop doing ‘it’ because we were “getting too old.” Our father never picked up the spoon himself, nor did he object to its use. So, it surprised us to hear her say the whole thing “really bothered him.” At, yet, another debriefing with her, following a doctor’s appointment, she told us he made her bring it up with the pediatrician. As a result, a permanent moratorium on spanking took effect, leaving the wooden spoon replaced by a more powerful weapon: words.
Stay tuned for the Part II of Marcus A. Boyd’s “Born in the USA,” which is scheduled for publication later today (February 2, 2019) at 10:00 PM EST.
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