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It took me years to believe that some people are just plain mean. I’m sure I had passed my 50th birthday before this realization occurred, and it didn’t happen overnight. In fact, it took some time, going over family history and life experiences before I realized: some people are just mean. They go out of their way to hurt others… to put down a co-worker…nit-pick someone’s performance, their appearance, financial status, house, car, children, educational level, etc.
It also didn’t take a genius IQ to figure out that mean people are no fun. They’re usually pessimists, sometimes jealous or prideful. They are not necessarily competitive a healthy sense, are highly-guarded when in the public and generally only have a few close friends -- or maybe none.
My first encounter with mean people occurred as a teenager when my mother shared this story: My grandmother married when she was barely 16. She had an eighth-grade education, her father was killed before she was born in 1899, and her mother had to take in ironing to maintain her family of five children.
My grandmother had four brothers, all several years older. They all had jobs and contributed significantly to the family’s budget. So, my grandmother, at four or five years old, would stand on a box to iron her brothers’ dress shirts, helping to take care of the family. She helped with the housework and did most of the cooking, well into her teens, escaping only when she married in 1915. By 1918, she had begun her own family.
My Aunt Mary, a mean person in her own right, was born in 1918; my mom in 1920 and my Aunt Jeanne in 1924.
When my mother was four or five, she was expected to change little sister Jeanne’s diapers, a job she hated but performedout of fear she would be spanked if she didn’t.
Christmas Day, 1925, was special for my mom because Santa brought her a doll she had admired in the mercantile store. Mom remembered how thrilled she was with this special doll, and played “house” with it most of the day, taking it with her to church service, celebrating the Nativity.
That night, after carefully swaddling her baby doll in a printed flour sack — a makeshift blanket — she kissed it goodnight and climbed into bed.
The next morning, my mother went to “awaken” her baby doll, but it wasn’t where she left it. Panicked at the thought she had lost her doll, she looked everywhere. Finally, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she went to her mother, saying the prized doll was missing.
Rather than comforting the five-year-old, my grandmother roughly grabbed the little girl’s hand and briskly walked to the living room, dragging her daughter behind.
In those days, the main parlor (as living rooms were called) was usually a spacious, elegantly-appointed space, characterized by carved moldings around the floor and 10- to 12-foot ceilings. Without saying a word, my grandmother guided Mother to the middle of the room and pointed to a corner of the ceiling.
When my mom looked up, she saw her precious baby doll, suspended from the ceiling and far out of her reach.
“My doll,” she cried as she continued looking at the object, appearing that it was flying far overhead.
“You neglected your sister’s diapers yesterday,” her mother scolded, each word prickling the little girl’s tear-stained face. “So, until you do your job, keeping your little sister’s bottom clean and dry, your doll will remain on the ceiling. I’ll decide when you deserve to have it again.”
As my mother related this story, I saw the remembered hurt in her eyes, heard it in her voice, and at that moment, I began to find answers to the questions I had about why Mom was the way she was: why she responded to various situations as she did, why I sensed a pain in her heart when it came time to discipline us.
If it had been 2022 and not almost a century before, I would have called my grandmother a child abuser, using cruel and unusual methods to discipline a helpless five-year-old. But since my grandmother passed away years ago, I continue to cherish the good times and our shared experiences when she was alive.
Yet, as an adult, with children and grandchildren of my own, I cannot — no matter how hard I try — begin to understand how any parent would do what my grandmother did. But, what I have learned is that mean people are really just sad people. They hurt others because they are hurting. Everyone is born beautiful, and much of the ugliness of others is put inside them by people who are hurting. I imagine this happened to my grandmother… and to my own mother.
There are plenty of good, even great, people all around us, but as much as we may not want to believe it, there are also mean people — and mean people are no fun.
