Around here they call that Tuesday

Growing up, I was certain of one thing - I never wanted to live in a house where yelling and fighting were the norm. My house wasn't a loud house. Screaming and yelling happened from time to time, but it was never expected or completely without purpose.

My first repeated exposure to a loud house came when I was seven and went to stay with my aunt and uncle. Around there, people didn't fret over explosive arguments, there was no distinction between blow up days and any other day, or any other time. You didn't know who it would come from or where it would be directed but always, without fail, it would come.

I can remember being seven, scared and alone in a house that was very full of love and anger. I only remember it being directed my way once. I was tasked with making sandwiches for our lunches. I had never made a sandwich before. Even when mom was very sick and I would stay home to help take care of her, I never made my own sandwiches. I'd seen it done plenty of times before - take two pieces of bread, dip a knife in the peanut butter, rub it on then spread a little jelly on the other side. Slap the pieces together and away you go, simple right? Wrong! Very Wrong! Butter knives were fine for the peanut butter and the jelly, but one had to use two separate knives to prevent mixing peanut butter in to the jelly jar - rendering it somehow completely spoiled and disgusting. Another important thing to note, bread only fits together perfectly one way. If you spread the fixings on the wrong sides, they won't fit together like a perfect puzzle. One large bump will line up with the smaller top bump and then jelly will drip down the exposed top of the other piece. And a dirty, used butter knife won't cut your sandwich smoothly, without dirty residue inducing slices of imperfection.

Perhaps a sharp knife would cut the bread into more perfect slice, but I wasn't allowed to touch the sharp knives. This is how I came to be the object of the yelling attention. My cousin was mad. I had screwed up! I was lazy, stupid, lame, and worthless. I couldn't even make a simple sandwich without messing everything up - but nobody else would ever tell me how much I deserved a good verbal thrashing. Everyone else felt sorry for me - sorry that mom was sick. I was alone. I was pathetic and sad. But none of that was a good enough excuse - everyone's life is tough and everyone's life sucks. Sandwiches still had to be made, and they were most edible when made right.

The yelling helped make me a better sandwich maker, still today I will go through 3 or four knives making the perfect sandwich, every time. The yelling didn't draw me closer to my extended family, though. It didn't help me see that I wasn't deserving of special treatment. It didn't help me feel unloved and unwanted by the other half of my family - up in Alaska. It didn't make me miss mom less.

In a home, yelling shouldn't be as expected as sunrise, sunset, taxes or Tuesdays.