A Screwdriver To the Ribcage

Toxic ideals and a lack of fatherly advice

Photo by Mitchel Lensink on Unsplash

There I was, an eleven-year-old stuck between a block of abandoned offices and a defunct parking lot with a screwdriver pressed against my ribcage. He demanded what was mine with eyes that spoke a language of their own. I was told to either hand over one of my cigarettes — our currency at the time — or he would push the sharp object into my lung. My friend didn’t offer any help, nor did he run. We froze, as did time.

It made me realise that life is unfair and that I was positioned low in the dominance hierarchy (and that this cigarette-stealing, screwdriver-wielding boy gave me the blueprint of how to climb it — at least in our environment).

This wasn’t my first encounter with intimidation, but it affected me differently, radically changing my worldview.

I spent parts of my summers, and some winters, with my grandparents in a modest 19th-century house tucked away in the woods with an outhouse and a well for drinking water. It was like going back in time — a far cry from the mean streets I was used to.

My dear grandmother, a lifelong ophidiophobe, taught me how to spot snakes in the underbrush; my grandfather showed me how to hunt and harvest meat from moose. While it gave me a sense of belonging, it wasn’t transferable to…