In one ear and out the other

My sister (deceased) and I are in this picture. My sister is at the left end of the third row. I am obscured further back. At center, with white robes, is the Carol choir (the children’s choir). Pastor Bill Childs is at right; near him is the infamous Mrs. Dager (white collar and glasses), the church organist and choir director. She also taught piano to my sister and I, and her fervent desire was to get us crying playing Clementi 64th-note arpeggios. (1954.)

—Years ago in the early ‘50s, when Yr Fthfl Srvnt was six or seven years old……
We children sat in the first two or three pews on the right side of the church sanctuary for the first 20-25 minutes of the regular Sunday worship service. That is, until the pastor began his sermon.
Before he began, we children were led into an anteroom so we didn’t fidget during his sermon.
Before leaving we had a children’s sermon, usually the pastor, but not always.
One time it was my father, one of the deacons who helped found the church.
My father quickly became angry with me. He started yelling at me, threatening violence.
I admit I egged him on. He was demonstrating to the congregation what a jerk he could be. (I’m not a Trumper, so taste-and-decorum here.)
His yelling increased. He screamed he would beat me to a pulp when we got home. It drove him crazy the congregation could see what a jerk he could be. (Again, taste-and-decorum.)
Nothing happened when I got home; my mother had probably intervened.
His madness was nothing new. It continued through childhood, high-school, college, and even into my 30s.
By then I was married and far from home in Rochester; plus I was driving bus for Regional-Transit-Service, the supplier of transit bus-service in the Rochester area.
My parents were still in northern DE, raising my younger siblings. I was first-born, and had left my family behind.
What made my father maddest was I paid no attention to him. He could smack me, or scream, and I just let him foam.
In one ear and out the other, which made him angrier still. He’d become a raging maniac.
I never challenged him, but unfortunately, for him anyway, I got lots of abuse from passengers when I drove bus.
Most were decent, but occasionally I’d get a jerk.
Same reaction as my father: “In one ear and out the other.”
Or “I can’t drive this thing if you keep yelling at me! Keep yelling at me and I’ll stop. I can’t get you home if you keep yelling at me!”
In other words, I got so I could parry jerks. (Taste-and-decorum again.)
One time my parents visited me in Rochester — probably on bald tires with the cord showing. 360 miles.
“I hope you’re not driving home on those tires,” I said to my father.
My father started raging: “The Lord will protect us! What do you know? Rebellious and disgusting!”
Enter bus-driving experience dealing with jerks (more taste-and-decorum).
“What brought that on?” I asked. That was my bus-driving experience challenging jerks.
Suddenly my father was speechless. Never before had I challenged him. Previously I just let him rage or beat me.
“In one ear and out the other.”
Eventually my parents moved to south FL as my siblings came of age.
My father died of Parkinson’s in 1994, and I visited my mother a final time.
She was distraught! Obviously her firstborn was gone. My father had lost me.
So now, 70 years late, and after my beloved wife died, I recover from a screaming frenzy, the continual bad-mouthing.
I remember crying years ago in a south Jersey diner during a motorcycle return to my childhood digs.
I had always been on my own; I never had a loving family. What I had was a screaming maniac with a supporting sidekick.
She mellowed as I got older — she could see my father was losing me.

• My parents were Bible-beaters.