Andrew Bailey’s mom saw through his model behavior, and helped him survive what was truly dangerous to him.
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The trouble my mom had raising me wasn’t that I head butted strange men in the balls. The trouble was when I started acting too good. That’s a lesson from my show, Scrupulosity, in which my obsessive need to be constantly good leads me to believe God wants me dead. The show’s mostly true and the premise is entirely so. This piece is about how my mom dealt with my early obsession:
Whenever my mom got distracted shopping, I would B-line it for the toy section to ogle the Star Wars figures, Transformers and plastic guns. But then some jackass would walk right in front of me. Stand, gaping, like I wasn’t even there. It pissed me off.
I’d wait until the man turned around, unleashing my perfectly aimed assault with a crunching fury. The man would barrel over in pain. It was wonderful. But then my mother would arrive. She’d apologize profusely. Most men would nod and glare, leaving as quickly as they could, which wasn’t that quickly because their testicles were throbbing.
My mom tried to punish me but it didn’t work. So she begged me, pleaded with me, to please just stop running off and head butting men in their privates. While I respected her position on the matter, there was something about head butting people that was, well, fun.
Then I learned about Satan.
♦◊♦
Our next door neighbours had an angelic child. Jack didn’t head butt people in the privates. Yes, he stole other children’s toys, and money, and once lit a cat on fire, but he atoned for such actions. He did God’s work by telling the other neighbourhood children that it was a sin to hit him no matter what he’d done to their cat.
One time we were on the forest trail behind my house looking for snakes. My favourite creatures on earth. I had an aquarium filled with dead grass, leaves and twigs to make the ideal habitat for them. Much more ideal than the forest. After I caught a red striped garter snake Jack told me that snakes and other animals did not have souls and therefore could never go to heaven. Worse yet, Satan came to earth in the form of a snake, so I really shouldn’t trust my pets.
“Who’s Satan?” I asked.
I’d heard the name before but never really paid attention. Now, however, it involved snakes. I had to know. Jack’s parents gave me a puzzle and comic book written specifically for young children. It was all about two adorable young tykes, Jimmy and Suzie, who are pursued by demons and Satan through the Terrible Forest of Sin.
One of the puzzles was this maze made up of demonic trees. I put my pencil down and tried to make it to the end but I couldn’t. Why? Because this maze didn’t have an end — there’s no escape from the Terrible Forest of Sin.
I turned the page to find Jimmy and Suzie burning in hell. I turned it again to find a giant rock demon labeled “Sin” murdering everyone in the Kingdom of Heaven with a sharpened spike.
Next time I was over at Jack’s house, his parents asked me if I had read the book they gave me. I said, “Yup”. They asked if I would like to be saved from eternal damnation. I thought, “Good idea.” They asked me if I renounced Satan and all his works.
I told them that I would never renounce Satan, even if my life depended on it.
There was a moment of silence. Jack’s father seethed. Blood vessels popped out of unexpected parts of his body. Finally his mom asked, “Do you know what ‘renounce’ means?” I shook my head. “It means you don’t like Satan. If you renounce him you don’t like him.”
“Oh,” I said. “Then I do renounce him.”
Everyone was very relieved. They asked me if I renounced all my past sins and I did. They gave me a card stating that I, Andrew Bailey (aged 4 years, 2 months), was saved on a Tuesday.
I ran home and showed the card to my mother, explaining to her about Satan and how I wasn’t damned to hell anymore. Then I apologized for swearing.
My parents told me that, while it was important I pray and be a good person, I needn’t fear God or Satan. God loved me and was merciful. Part of life was making mistakes and having fun. Just to be on the safe side though I thought it best never to do anything wrong ever again.
The week before I was saved I had smashed an entire bag of potatoes with a hammer, let a snake loose in the kitchen, and written, in crayon, “01” on the side of the car so that it would look like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard. The week after: nothing. My mother returned my box of crayons. She stored the hammer and the potatoes beside each other and kept repeating, “Whatever you do, we’ll still love you.” But she couldn’t make me misbehave.
Until, at the Bay, I was mesmerized by a Yoda action figure when this guy in track pants walked right in front of me. My mom bent down and whispered, “Go ahead sweetie. Just go ahead.”
♦◊♦
That’s the ending we wish had happened. Whether it was the neighbours scaring me, or chemicals in my brain that kicked in around the same time, I never did misbehave much growing up. By the age of 16 I was a straight A student, I volunteered at church, I was good at sports and I was suicidal because of an undiagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder. Yet, the fact that her deeper concern was for me, not whether I was “good” or “bad”, was why she saw through my model behaviour, why she stopped me from taking my own life, and why I can write this today.
Photo credit: Flickr/CGP Grey