IT can be traumatically consequential for a very young child when his or her positive ‘white’ scenario instantly turns into a negative ‘black’; for, it is common enough for that child to thus experience catastrophization, even if it is of his/her own making — indeed, law-breaking mountains out of childhood-adventure molehills.
The author of Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology, and How You Can Heal writes that it is the unpredictability of a stressor, and not the intensity, that does the most harm. When the stressor “is completely predictable, even if it is more traumatic — such as giving a [laboratory] rat a regularly scheduled foot shock accompanied by a sharp, loud sound — the stress does not create these exact same [negative] brain changes” (pg.42). …
In sunny White Rock of 1972, I — a five-year-old boy with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder and high sensitivity, thus not always easy with whom to deal — was granted the honor of hanging out with my three older siblings, all of whom were accompanied by their own similarly aged friends. I was about two years the junior of the youngest of my siblings, who was herself the next youngest amongst the entire group. Naturally I was the kid whom no one from the group (totaling seven) paid much, if any, attention to. I was not their problem, as far as they were concerned, that afternoon. Contrarily, it much appeared to be but mine and with which I’d have to disturbingly deal alone.
One moment, I was with the others inside an aged, abandoned, single-floor house as everyone investigated decrepit furniture and other items; the next moment, some of my people blurted out an alarming warning, with all of my people scattering away, outwards in every direction. I, however, just stood there completely bewildered and alone, looking around the briefly empty place for a couple of seconds. As a result of that day’s ordeal, I would know early-childhood abandonment trauma.
Instead of my people, there suddenly stood a half-dozen boys, all surely at least twice my age. They more than sufficiently surrounded me, as though they actually believed that I wasn’t too petrified to attempt a dash and perhaps successful evasion.
They all worked with law enforcement, they fooled me effectively enough to induce formidable fear in me: “Have you ever heard of the Mod Squad?” asked one, perhaps their ‘leader.’ (FYI: The Mod Squad was at first a 1968-commenced, bit-of-a-hit TV series, followed by a not-so-hot, 1999 motion picture about the three rather rogue criminals-turned-law-enforcement demi-agents.)
To the present day, I can’t recall what was my intimidated reply. Perhaps a muffled and/or squeaky “Yeah,” or nothing at all.
“Well, we’re with the Mod Squad,” said another.
It’s amazing how naïve we can perceive ourselves to have been at a very young age, though of course with the advantage of clear hindsight. However, experiencing mind-numbing ordeals real-time is too immediate to adequately analyze, and exceptionally so at such a cerebrally and psychologically undeveloped point in a very young child’s life.
The rather young Mod Squad recruits soon escorted me outside and onto the street, all the while having completely encircled me. It was quite apparent that the poor condition of the abandoned house did not matter at all to them, for their disinterest in that fact allowed them artificial cause to psychologically torment a small and skinny, very young, redheaded squirt like me.
They took me along the neighborhood streets (including Pacific Avenue) lining steeply-slanted southeastern White Rock, from which I could see an unobstructed sunny Blaine, Washington (State), which like White Rock was also adjacent to Semiahmoo Bay; meanwhile they acted out a fantasy of theirs as some sort of enforcers of justice or apprehenders of very young, bad boys. But their fantasy fun was at my emotional expense, since I was the one living a daylight nightmare, whimpering and weeping a few times; it was my first brush with some form of albeit self-anointed ‘law.’
The Mod Squaders walked me a block to where two streets met, and looking up one (i.e. Habgood Street), we, the Mod Squaders and I, spotted my people, who themselves were looking down the same street at us, as they walked in the same direction (eastward, along Cliff Avenue). It was at that point that my people may have realized that the entire bad situation may not be just my problem, but perhaps it was also soon-to-be their predicament as well; they may have then felt baffled and concerned over what they and I were supposed to and would do about it all.
Both sides continued to walk our parallel paths eastward, though a long-block apart, at pretty much the same walking pace; and we both would stop two more times at two more intersections to look up and down the long-block at each other.
The last thing that I, almost five decades later, can recall regarding that ordeal is being at home with my unhappy parents after the police, obviously contacted by the Mod Squaders, had just left. As for my people, I don’t remember them being in the said picture at the later point of that sunny afternoon, not even my three older siblings.
Logic dictated that it was not in my siblings’ best interests to be around me, Mom or Dad, considering the fact they played a significant role in the cause of the very unfortunate incident.
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