Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

When the Dragon Roared in the Arab Quarter of Barcelona                                                                                           

Filed under: Uncategorized — Bob at 7:16 am on Wednesday, August 24, 2022

by Robert M. Katzman © August 23, 2022

This story has its roots in 1955 and deals with the never-expected consequences of child abuse through the decades of one man’s life. Most people go from day to day, live their lives and hope for the best. But not everyone. Children who have been severely beaten when helpless often grow up to follow the same pattern with their husbands/wives or children and continue the chaos for another generation or two. Other people seek comfort in drugs and the company of people who live violent lives as a way of coping, (or not coping) with what happened to them long ago. Difficult to put a band-aid on the horrors of one’s past – pat it on its head and say,

”There, there, child… everything will be all right.”

No, everything won’t be alright.

I have been extraordinarily fortunate in being one of the few such people who managed to escape my prison, grow up, learn to become self-reliant, fall in love and marry some wonderful women, having four children between 1975 and 1996. It would be an error to not say that a compassionate wife who grasps the enormity of what happened to me long ago was a major factor in my doing my best to live a “normal” life, whatever that might be. 

I will explain briefly about what and when, and a few examples of the fury which is always there, within me.

When I was very young, I decided it was a giant, coiled, sleeping Dragon, the scent of its fiery breath escaping sometimes through my nostrils when I was upset about something, and that wicked fragrance reminded me to just settle down and let things lie.

These stories are parts of other stories I have written over time. 

In a way, I am creating “new pottery out of broken shards” at least, in my own mind.

From 1955 to 1964, when I was fourteen, I was beaten just about every day by a mentally ill mother who hated her life, her marriage and mistakenly having children. She was the daughter of immigrants and I never learned what happened to her as a child which may have triggered her unending rage. Unfortunately, I was the available one on whom she chose to inflict it. But I ran away into the night, into the cold pouring rain, connected with my father living in a single room apartment in Hyde Park. A World War II vet, his life peaked there and went downhill afterwards. He was the one who drilled it into me to never hit a girl, ever – that it was wrong and I must understand that.

My slightly older sister disappeared as soon as she could into her many friends’ homes, even though never hit, and as a consequence, I was virtually an only child. I never saw my sister, played with her, talked to her or knew her at all. She became the ice queen in my life when we were grown up and would meet at family gatherings. No hugs, no kisses, no inquiries about my life or my children. A child doesn’t have to be beaten to suffer severe damage to their emotions, their personalities. Her early death from cancer didn’t end my longing to have her welcome me into her life, and I was sixty when she died. That death triggered the end of hope for me, and major depression followed. Drugs keep it at bay.

Here are a very few examples of what can happen to a child who lived under a roof where he was beaten by leather belts, metal belt buckles, rubber hoses on his bare skin, uncountable slaps across my face, sometimes when sleeping, metal garbage cans, and the screaming and yelling which accompany those abuses. It started when I was five. I never hit back even when I grew taller than her. It was impossible for me to strike her after my father’s years of forbidding it.

I was a strong kid, though slight in appearance, taught myself carpentry, climbed trees, ran everywhere.

Here are some incidents worth telling, not told as colorful stories, just the facts, to convey what such a childhood could do to a child. The first few are all before I left home and graduated 8th grade, meaning the beatings continued uninterrupted all of this time. There were no phone numbers to call, no one to intervene and when I repeatedly ran away, the police always brought the mischievous little tyke home again. I was in hell, every single day. That last story is about an incident in Barcelona, Spain when I was seventy.

In chronological order:

1) In summer, 1958, I was with my mother Anne visiting my art teacher where I was learning to use oil paint, charcoal, pastels and sketching when I was eight years old, my mother was talking about my severe allergies and that my father and her had gone to the university of Chicago Medical clinic because they had found a new drug to help people like me survive during ragweed times and everything else which made my life hell.

But the drug was experimental, she said and it was causing my face to get puffy and fine hair was growing on my cheeks, when I reached up about a foot to put my hand over her mouth to stop her from talking. She had been holding my hand while talking to my after school teacher, and suddenly she squeezed very hard, crushing my small fingers while still smiling and talking to the teacher. Then she said she had to go, and I had to get back to school.

We went home, I knew something bad was coming but not what it would be. My mother instructed me to go to the kitchen closet and open the top drawer where there was a folded up part of a garden hose, cut off on both ends. Then she quietly ordered me to pull my pants down and lie down across her lap. I did this because there was no place to run to, nothing to do and I couldn’t fight with my mother. That would be wrong.

Then my mother proceeded to beat me on my rear end for a long time, with no words spoken. I said nothing.

Then she quietly told me to stand up, pull up my pants and go to school. She was in control. I was her insect.

I remember it was 1958 because in that year I was in 3rd grade and it was the first time I went to classes on the second floor. Why remember something like that?

Because after I slowly made my way the several blocks to school, the pain was progressively worse. I climbed the stairs in agony one step at a time, then after school I went home to my room and cried for a long time. No one heard me. I was unable to walk. My rear end was stone.

That night my father and sister were sitting on the end of my parent’s bed. I had taken a shower, seen what I looked like back there in the mirror, and then without a word, walking into my parent’s bedroom, turned around and slowly lowered my white towel to let them see what I had seen. My entire rear end was black. Completely black.

I heard them both gasp loud enough for me to hear, then I walked out and went to my room across the hall on the second floor of our house. 

I don’t remember much after that stunning day and night, except nothing was done about it and I stayed home a few days until my rear end returned to its original color. I heard my mother talking to my father saying she didn’t hit me that much and she was afraid somehow, someone else might see my black ass. It worried her.

2) In July 1960, when I was ten, a woman my mother hired “to take care” of me while she worked full-time as an interior decorator must have witnessed my mother’s violence toward me and mistakenly assumed that anyone could do as they pleased to me. I was the house rag doll. But she didn’t understand. My insane mother was the ONLY person who I tolerated hitting me. No one else. 

The woman, a big strong person from the Appalachian Mountains, soon enough began banging me around, falling on top of me on the top of a bed, smothering me, slapping me with wet washcloths.

One day, after she terrified me once too many, I ran down the street, banging on every door, organized a dozen “nice” boys and girls also in the 5th grade. I pleaded for their help in attacking this woman and getting her out of my house. To my amazement, after some eerier silence as what she was doing to me sank into their minds, all of them agreed. 

We trooped down to my house, I quietly unlocked the door, crept up the stairs where I spied and found her lying on my bed smoking a cigarette. As pre-arranged, I yelled “CHARGE!!” and all thirteen of us swarmed her, two kids on each arm and leg, and we pulled the stunned woman off my bed, let her bang on the floor, dragged her head first down my sixteen wooden steps, slowly, so her head hit each step, then collectively threw her out onto the concrete stoop to await my parents return. The last act was a short, cute, blond child slamming the heavy wooden door with great enthusiasm. Then they slowly dispersed back into the neighborhood walking quietly as I warned them so no one would ever find out what they did that hot July day. No one ever did, either.

3) In 1962, a group of ten boys in my school decided they didn’t like me, were intending to gang up on me after school on a day of their choosing, and then beat the hell out of me. I had few friends, none to help me do anything about this constant unspecific threat hanging over me; and though I’d had successful fights with some of them individually, ten was a very big number.

There was a new kid who recently transferred to my school. He was shorter than me, very quiet, and no one knew him. He, like me, walked alone around the playground before school started and during recess. I decided to take a chance.

I approached him, described the frankly impossible situation facing me, asked him if he would help me, somehow, and waited for him to tell me to go to hell. Wouldn’t you?

But this amazing and unreasonably brave person of twelve years stunned me by agreeing to see if we could find a way to defeat them in an intellectual way, because our numbers were totally out of whack. His answer to me changed my life and created a life-long friendship to this day. At that bleak moment, this brave soul and I became an “Island of Friendship”. While our relationship was initially based on courage, his analytical intellect was very new to me, and welcome.

After much discussion, I informed the two ringleaders of the plot to “get me after school someday” to make it today, to their amazement, and pleasure. They were unaware of my new friend, or our plan. When we all gathered after 3:15 p.m. in a hidden pocket of the construction zone expanding our grammar school – as was happening all across America as the millions of baby-boomers traveled through school every year – the ten formed a circle around me, and I waited. Then, like in a movie, my friend rushed out of the crowd and stood back-to-back with me so no one could get behind me, knock me over and then allow a bunch of them to pile on. 

This new configuration confounded them, and though some ran toward either of us alone, or in twos, our well-aimed punches bloodied some mouths and when enough of them saw it was hopeless, because they were too dumb to figure out we could never defend against ten of them, they gave up in disgust, left us and went home.

A person reading this might ask me since I didn’t know what the other boys would actually do, and I might have been beaten badly – in my mind, none of what they could do to me singly or as a mob would match in any way what was waiting for me every day when I got home.  My agreeing to accept their challenge with my new friend as a secret ally was completely irrational, but I didn’t know that. I wasn’t afraid of pain. Or them.

4) Also in 1962, I was running at top speed in that same playground, same year and was moving very fast when a tough kid in 8th grade, two years older, viciously stuck out his foot, tripped me and I went sprawling into the sharp gravel. As I put my arms straight ahead of me, the stones cut up my right arm badly, and blood came out of several deep cuts. I lay there in pain, the bell rang, and the 8th grader and his friends walked by me and laughed. They went into the school. I followed a little later when I could get up. 

This is the first time I remember that coiled Dragon within me deciding to strike back.

I washed off my arm in the bathroom, pulling as many pieces of stone out of my arm as possible, then washed off most of the blood. After that, I went down to the nurse’s office where a kind white-haired woman who was too familiar with me finished removing even more stones, put an ointment over the cuts which mostly stopped bleeding, then wrapped up my right arm in gauze and made a sling for me, because my arm was in agony from the hard fall. She gave me a note for my teacher and wished me well, as always.

I went to my class, gave my teacher the note and though some blood was oozing through the gauze, I answered no questions from the surprised teacher, found my seat and looked at the clock, filled to overflowing with hate and rage. I heard nothing that afternoon, watching the clock, making my plans.

When the bell rang, I was the first one out of the room, raced to where I knew the older kid’s room was, waited in the shadows for him to leave the class, knowing he would turn toward the exit and not toward me. He walked cheerfully out the door, then out of the school property and I made my move. I was left-handed, so unharmed in that way, so ready, and as that older boy would soon remember, a very fast runner. The once sleeping Dragon was now out, roaring, fire-breathing, claws out-stretched and I raced after that kid, leaped up to wrap my strong left arm around his throat and he collapsed like a house of cards.

I squeezed tighter and tighter, the Dragon and I, merciless to him, wanting him to die, and we squeezed further, together until a woman, a teacher, screamed at me, grabbed my left arm saying,

“You have to let him go! He’s turning blue! You’ll kill him!”

Yeah. Right.

But her screeching voice, her hand pulling hard on my arm broke the demonic spell and my furious Dragon-self subsided. Just me now. Just me choosing to allow him to breathe. Who is laughing at me now, you fool?

I stood up and the kid slowly turned to see who it was that was strangling him. He saw my face. He wasn’t laughing this time. He looked very, very, surprised. What could the intervening teacher do?

Tell someone that well, yes, we were off school grounds and then this short skinny kid 12-ear-old with his arm in a bloody sling suddenly attacked tackled another bigger, taller, older kid, and then trying to kill him. 

Sure, who’d believe a bullshit story like that?

I looked down at him, him on the ground this time, and spat at him,

“Not so tough without yer pals, are ya, asshole”.

He slowly got up, walked away from the crowd of kids who witnessed all this, including my new friend from the last time, and went home, like the rest of us. Now for certain, no one would speak to me in the playground, except for my new friend, who understood me better than anyone. 

But just as certain, no older kid ever approached me, threatened or touched me for my last two years of grammar school. I heard they thought I was insane. Me and the Dragon didn’t care, if it kept them all away from me.

5) 1965.. I will try to compress this, because the complete and dramatic story has too many details. Here goes:

I had been tested and subsequently accepted into the University of Chicago Laboratory High School in 1964, surprising me more than anyone. For me, my feeling was, after learning I was enrolled in America’s best high school, thirty blocks north of my old neighborhood, that this was a new chance for me. No one knew about how I had been treated and how I had responded, and I was leaving the whole nightmare, and my mother, in the past.

That was the plan.

I will leave out the complicated part how I arranged to go there with no money whatsoever, and that I worked every day after school and full-time weekends to eat, sleep and cover the rent at home. This private stuff wasn’t known by anyone, not then.  What matters here is violence, and my trying to escapee from it.

I was in my first year of French class, sitting in a room with desks unattached to the floor, unlike how older people reading this will remember their own classrooms. There were about five rows across and four deep; as I remember, with the teacher and the blackboard in the front. I sat in the front row, near the door.

There had been three blonde kids who all sat behind me, the largest one in the middle, who had this problem: they didn’t like Jews like me – our darker skin, our darker eyes and hair and especially in my case, my much bigger nose. My small face hadn’t caught up to it yet and it was impossible for anyone not to notice that. 

Even though in a school where the Jewish population was about half of the total student body of 600, I assumed from the beginning that a sophisticated place like this expensive school which didn’t even have a football team so as to not bang up all the smart mostly very well-off kids – I would be free from prejudice. 

Didn’t work out that way.

Over the past six months I has steadfastly put up with it, as the three boys would endlessly whisper,

“Nose, nose, nose.”

throughout the entire time we were in the class together. No one else could hear them, and every so often, they would giggle at their fun. After all, there were three of them, the middle one a sophomore, and what was the skinny freshman kid with the big nose gonna do about it, huh?

Same play, different day.

I put up with it because I was very conscious that this special school would very likely be my last time to get a real education – and it turned out that way, too – and Bobby was going to be good. No fights. No trouble. No suspensions like in my grammar school. I could do it, I vowed to myself. Let that damned Dragon die of boredom. I wanted only peace and harmony, even if neither were on the menu that warm day in spring, 1965.

The regular teacher, a tough older woman who brooked nothing to interrupt her French class, though she was somehow unaware of those three dolts behind me. One day, she was gone. A young substitute replaced her; so the three felt unleashed and upped their game. Not only repeating the “Nose, nose, nose” part a little louder, so that even neighboring kids heard it, but since I never reacted all year, the big guy in the middle felt emboldened.

He began tapping my chair along with the chanting, trying to get a response from me, perhaps tears?

Unaware that in public school, words were different than contact, like knocking a chip of wood off of someone’s shoulder, I wanted so much to make the kid stop, nicely. 

But no one knew, yet, that I wasn’t truly, a “Nice kid”.

I turned around, looked right into the dumb center one’s eyes and said to him,

“Call me whatever you want, but don’t you touch my chair.” 

Now, off course I knew that I was throwing red meat at a savage dog, but to my way of reasoning, I gave him a chance. No way he could resist the consequences-free pleasure of kicking my chair one more time. Why not?

I waited. I was a real world, public school, lower class, fist-fighting dangerous kid and this fucker had already awakened my Dragon. Fire was breathing, smoke and fumes surrounding my head, and only I could see them, hear them, smell them, or feel them. My Dragon was poised, waiting…

Too late for me now, I knew, (or the remaining human part of me knew) I was so enraged at the endlessness of the insanity which kept following me, even in a special place like this one, which would soon be expelling me, or maybe arresting me – but not until I was done with the giggling blonde son-of-a bitch who was about to kick my chair, and learn I was the one Jew he should have left alone. Bullies never reconsider.

It came.

Barely a second after the creep’s toe touched my chair, I whirled around like some flaming Roman Candle, or better, a furious deadly Dragon, hellbent on his destruction and it came. I shot into him, my fingers curled around his neck, squeezing tightly as his eyes bulged in shock. We were hurtling back from the front row into the second row, into the third, the fourth and crashing against the concrete block wall after that, my strong hands never leaving his throat, and yes sir, I wanted him to die. 

Like all the rest of them all through my life, today I wanted him to die. The Dragon’s sharp teeth were deep into that kid’s neck, biting down.

We had knocked over nearby tables and chairs that day, and students, too. But within thirty seconds, we were swiftly separated by other kids, all the desks were back up, all the papers and pens were picked up and to my complete astonishment, the young substitute teacher, after a brief pause, looking at me, resumed teaching.

More than any single act before, this one stunned me more. The teacher resumed teaching.

Damn!

She said nothing to me, to anyone else, and although the other kids were murmuring after class, the blonde kids were far away from me. Something was so different about this place.

I waited, assuming the savagery I committed in a place like this had to be reported to a dean or worse, the Principal, that some angry someone soon was coming for me to take me out of class…of course that had to happen. Like always.

But no one came. 

It was never brought up.

Not in the remaining three years I was in that amazing school.

For the first time, I experienced justice, and it was so new, so shiny to me, I barely recognized it.

After that one day, the fighting ended, I began to understand the world was bigger than I thought.

Now, this story, in which I am no hero to be sure, because of the violence I was capable of unleashing, and my open desire to kill. 

But nothing happened to awaken the sleeping Dragon within, and my life flowed by… if not a “lazy river” it was a much smoother ride than the first fifteen years.

Now, it doesn’t matter what happened in the intervening fifty-five years.

My point is that abused kids never fully recover.

From my “PHD” opinion as one of those angry kids, I assumed all of us were in some way, damaged, dangerous and of course, beyond repair.

There was, however, one particular defensive decision I made at eighteen, to never drink alcohol. 

The idea was that all my bridges might fall down under its influence and my crazy Dragon might do what I couldn’t imagine. So, except for sipping bad wine on Passover, I never drank spirits in my entire life.

                                                                     ************

6) My wife of 42 years, my kind, gentle and civilizing wife, was dead by 2017.

After much loneliness and searching, I found another woman who was her equal, like God was pumping them out one after another to keep me under control, it seemed.

But the last of my stores had closed in 2016. I was a writer publishing books, selling 6,000 of them, and I was a skilled, talented amateur photographer. The new woman in my life, after six whole weeks of a relationship, bravely flew across the Atlantic with me so I, perhaps we, could try to be of some use in helping a very old friend of mine caring for a wife recovering from cancer. All of us were near seventy years old, more or less.

After leaving Lisbon, Portugal, we next flew to Barcelona, Spain – because both of us were artists, though she more than me in most ways. Barcelona is to many people the center of the earth with its many-roomed Picasso Museum, its beyond-description, other-worldly La Sagrada Familia Church and more places like that. 

That was the agreement (easily) extracted from me, that if we do the first thing, we must do the second thing, because for a woman nearing seventy to travel alone in Europe could be dangerous. She was a smart woman.

But Fate, tapping its weary foot, missed my scaly old fire-breathing Dragon, sleeping quietly these decades.

This then happened, in 2020. Covid came to Spain, shutting it down, keeping all of its inhabitants locked indoors and no one knew what the hell was happening, but increasingly, lots of people were starting to die in Italy, Portugal and Spain. The word went out from all the medical authorities: 

“EVERYBODY MUST WEAR A MASK!” 

No exceptions.

My girlfriend had hurt her leg, was resting in bed, so I went out to search for the masks. 

But like all sharpies do when a panic arrives, they try to make a dirty profit out of the chaos.

Every place in the Gothic, or the oldest part of Barcelona we were in was charging $5 apiece for a mask.

My being from the great South Side of Chicago, I knew this was complete bullshit and I decided to look further afield, avoiding the occasional Spanish cop, for a better deal.

I went here and there, moving from one shadowy narrow street to another, then realizing I had drifted into the Arab part of Barcelona, which meant nothing special to me, a person of no prejudice, but it was shabbier, drearier and the guidebooks warned me against pickpockets, as if all other parts of town were protected by Spanish Angels. Yeah.

I kept trying place after place, found one which offered me ten for $10 which I immediately grabbed.

I was on my way back, my prize shoved into my pocket, taking a few more photos of the endlessly stunning architecture and the often-beautiful graffiti on random walls.

My iphone x – a luxury for me – took beautiful photos and gave me much pleasure. Thousands of photos were contained somewhere within it, a mystery to me, and it was the holder of them as far as I knew, and a precious souvenir of this six-week trip.

I was in a street that was a T-bone shape, with a street going away from me as I stood against the flat “T” part.

I held up that camera to snap another photo, when a kid on a bicycle raced by me and grabbed the phone.

But the same lightening reflexes which made me unhittable in dodgeball sixty years earlier still remained, and I grasped the lower part tightly and the kid got nothing.

But then, in a very strange moment, I realized how much I would have lost had the kid been successful, and I raged at him, loudly yelling,

“Hey asshole! Come back here and try that again, you bastard! C’mon, try it!”

My ancient Dragon roused itself, roaring with me, flames shooting out, which only I could see.

The foot traffic all around me stopped. Women moved closer, wearing colorful hijabs covering their faces.

The thieving kid himself stopped, racing down that center street, skidding his bike, and turned back to stare at the crazy old American tourist. I was surrounded by Arabs wondering what was wrong with me.

Stealing phones was just another day in the park there and if I didn’t want that, why was I there?

I stopped yelling, and in effect, the Dragon and I looked at each other, both of us saying at the same time,

“What the fuck are we doing, old man/old Dragon?”

I slumped back against the wall, calming down, amazed at my explosive fury, amazed that I would do such a crazy thing in an Arab alley, in another country. Why did I do that? What if that kid came back? Would I actually try to hit him in revenge? Insanity.

The moment of excitement passed, the crowd lost interest in me, the thief got back on his bike and slowly rode away from me. I was just another, perhaps slightly irrational excitable old tourist in their country. 

I felt so weary. I was embarrassed by what I did. No one else cared, but I certainly did.

Then it was clear to me. It is never over. The desire to hit back, hit back ever harder remains intact, no matter what. Not time, not age, not civilizing women could tamp down the fire. There was no “getting even’, for me.

What most people can’t understand is, there is never a victory, never enough to undo what has already happened. That probably within most of us, we are filled with varying amounts of fire. The crumbling black coal seethes, the swirling invisible wind sears.

But people, I gotta tell ya, that old, old fire, that fire…still burns.

***********

Publishing News!

(Currently seeking representation as a speaker/poet for hire)

Bob Katzman’s two new true Chicago books are now for sale, from him!
Vol. One: A Savage Heart and Vol. Two: Fighting Words

Gritty, violent, friendship, classic American entrepreneurship love, death, heartbreak and the real dirt about surviving in a completely corrupt major city under the Chicago Machine. More history and about one man’s life than a person may imagine.

Please visit my new website: http://www.dontgoquietlypress.com
If a person doesn’t want to use PayPaI, I also have a PO Box & I ship anywhere in America.

Send me a money order with your return and contact info.
I will get your books to you within ten days.
Here’s complete information on how to buy my books:

Vol 1: A Savage Heart and Vol. 2: Fighting Words
My books weigh almost 2 pounds each, with about 525 pages each and there are a total together of 79 stories and story/poems.

Robert M. Katzman
Don’t Go Quietly Press
PO Box 44287
Racine, Wis. 53404-9998 (262)752-3333, 8AM–7PM

Books cost $29.95 each, plus shipping

For: (1) $3.95; (2) $5.95; (3) $7.95; (4) $8.95 (5) $9.95;(6) $10.95

(7) $11.95; (8) $12.95; (9) $13.95 (10) $15.95 (15) $19.95

I am also for hire if anyone wants me to read my work and answer questions in the Chicago/Milwaukee area. Schools can call me for quantity discounts for 30 or more books. Also: businesses, bookstores, private organizations or churches and so on.

My two latest books are available in the Racine Wis Public Library. Both books are labeled: 921 KAT. ROB on their spines, in autobiography Dept. 

Signed Books are also for sale at: 

Studio Moonfall Bookstore, 5031 7th St. Kenosha, Wis, email: hello@studiomoonfall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2 Comments »

Comment by Herb Berman

August 24, 2022 @ 3:34 pm

Bob, are you sure you aren’t Charles Dickens reporting from 19th century London? My God, old friend, how did you survive?
I consider you amazing, Bob. I’m not sure how you managed to survive, much less thrive. I had an easy, a privileged, childhood (wonderful parents), and my journey to adulthood, though not without its challenges, was fairly smooth. I’m humbled by your story. I don’t think I’ve ever had the courage you’ve had.

Take care,
Herb

Comment by Bob

August 25, 2022 @ 8:51 am

From: Pollock, Raphael
7:21 AM (3 hours ago)
to me

Bob, this is a great essay—more an essay than a story, really—but one with painfully high emotional content and impact. Certainly reinforces my wish that you would be with me in the foxhole when/if Armageddon were to approach…I think I know what our roles would have been if we found ourselves in the Warsaw Ghetto—certainly not as members of the Judenrat kowtowing to the Nazi bastards…

In the balance, it’s all good…the Dragon is an apt metaphor. The thing about dragons is that you don’t fuck with them, they’re impossible to tame, and the best strategy is obviously to not poke at them, as your vignettes clearly show. What is special here is that you figured out that the Dragon was slow to arouse, but once engaged, he(?) was your ally, and you figured out how to partner with him (?) to overcome these other demons.

I’m glad that you never had to invoke or succumb to his (?) powers when tortured by your mother, because you would have killed her and all the lessons you have learned and the creativity with which you have lived would have been pretty hard to disseminate from behind bars at Joliet State Prison…

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