Bless me, Doctor, I have sinned
Since seeing you last week.
The spirit had the will to win
But ahhh, the flesh was weak!

Victor Buono (1907-1981)

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When I was five years old my father killed a rattlesnake.  He hoped to have it made into a belt.  I thwarted his plans to do so by eating the snake’s skin. 

He had peeled it away from the serpent’s body, laid it out on a wooden board from the scrap pile and stretched it, so that it was flush with the board. 

Bored, and in search of something to eat (I was always in search of something to eat) I ate it.  It was delicious.  Dad must have soaked it in salt water before he tacked it to the board with little nails, for that’s how it tasted, salty–a lot like a big, three-foot long crazily patterned potato chip. 

Mother was delighted, and Dad laughed so hard that he cried.  Mother thought having a fat child was “cute.”  Other mothers constantly rebuffed her when, after complaining that I was hungry, she gave me something sweet to eat. 

Her insidious programming remains with me to this day, and I hate her for it.  Forcing me to be fat (it would not have been difficult to start me early on eating healthy food) caused me thousands of difficulties as I progressed through grammar school and on into high school.  Especially to this very day. 

You told me that I must deprive
My appetites, and somehow strive
To conquer these compulsive drives
To eat which now obsess me!
You told me all the foods to ban,
You gave me pills to aid the plan …
I still outweigh my own sedan!
And so I must confess me:

Victor Buono (1907-1981)

Changing her programming has been extraordinarily difficult, and I still carry around an extra hundred pounds worth of stored water commonly known as fat.  Mother, it seems was, and always has been, a sadist. 

I believe that Mother’s philosophy of child rearing was similar to that of training a dog. 

She loved to present me with a cookie or bowl of ice cream, then noting that I was content with my treat, would  snatch it away from me and hold it above my head.  I wanted the treat which she’d so generously provided, and like a dog, pranced around on my hind legs, reaching out for the bowl, or ice cream cone or bag of potato chips.  Mother thought my distress funny.  She laughed at me continuously. 

Mother seemed delighted at my suffering.  From an early age, I believe she started when I was an infant, by taking my fingers into her mouth and biting them.  I believe she was fascinated and genuinely amused by the transformation my face made from sedate happiness to instantaneous scowl, to pout, to flat out suffering. 

Mother loved to hit me.  She slapped me about the face and shoulders twenty to fifty times a day. 

I’d plead, “Please don’t hit me,” and she’d promise.  “I won’t dear.”  A few minutes later, for no apparent reason, she’d slap me a few more times.  Each time, I cried, each time she laughed with obvious glee. 

“You said you wouldn’t hit me,” I’d complain.  Her response was, “I lied.”  And, as a reward, she’d hit me again.