So, okay, according to the response I got from Other Patti (who is wiser beyond her comprehension) (and she should just read this and shut up and not respond), there is a discrepancy between what Other Patti (and lots of other readers, I assume) and I see as the definition of hide. She sees it, as do many, as a flight from Badness. An Other, who wishes harm.
So, let’s keep my mother out of this, especially since she’s dead and all.
Yes, I fled from her, but to a bigger world where I could create a magnificent thing to live in. I remember writing there, behind the boxwood on the lawn where I couldn’t see the house if I sat in just the right position, in a green plastic binder, on note-paper, in Flair marker pens of green. (My mother wrote in green ink, with her one fountain pen.) Or/And blue. No purple or red — that would have been garish. I don’t think I had any black ones.
We are different. We are not showy. Or trivial. Or trendy.
In the eighth grade, I gave up capital letters at the beginning of sentences, and at the beginning of proper names and nouns. And anywhere else they might be otherwise used. I did this because I didn’t know or understand why capital letters were used in such instances. This experiment of mine lasted about a week or two or ten days. After that, I knew/know now … why they are used. How they help arrange sentences and sight and the altogether mighty paragraph: I know now.
But you see, I had to find this all out for myself. On my own. And I remember it so vividly now, nearly forty years after the fact, as one of the greatest lessons I ever learned and taught myself.
And I learned all this from my hiding/escape. So don’t say I hid. I closed the door on a tiny world, and have lived, ever since, most of me — that is, in a bigger one. One where I can make mistakes, and not be obliterated because of that.
When you escape, you are free.
If you escape, you can be free.
I wish to decline a verb. Tell me: what verb?
white pebble 