Art Pact 41

Having had quite an remarkable childhood, I was of course quite surprised to discover that the people I had thought of as my parents were not in fact parents of any kind. I had had my suspicions, of course, I think any child would have, but the illusion was maintained so carefully that - well, reading back what I've just written, the fact that I believed I was like any other child, that the unusual disconnect with my parents was by no means actually unusual, that is a testament to the artistry with which I was fooled.

Literature was the tool with which the oddities of my upbringing were camouflaged. My parents and teachers (who were of course, no more teachers than my parents were parents), ensured that I was well prepared to be introduced to the wonderful world of books, and my isolation ensured that, having been prepared, I was thirsty for every tome upon which I could lay my hands. Viewed from afar, I can see how spoonfed I was - all of the books which I was allowed access seemed diverse to me, but in the aspect of teenage alienation they were telling the same story. I understood that there were differences in how the characters in the novels lived their lives. They had adventures, they went outdoors and roamed hills, towns, valleys, lakes, they fought enemies, they made friends, they made and foiled plans, they were ill and injured and crazy and on occasion they died, but they were always misunderstood by their parents and in their turn did not understand their parents, and that I felt was a thread that connected them to me. Someone, a writer in some foreign place, had felt or observed these feelings in children and teenagers, and had included them in their story as an integral part of the young human experience.

The existence of the... people? things? that I called parents, teachers, strangers, workers, all of them prevented me from populating my world with imaginary friends, but had I done so I imagine that those friends would have been cut from the same cloth as me and the characters in my books. As it was, I lacked nothing in interaction with others, so my constant chatter as a small child was listened to and responded to by one parent or another, preventing me from developing the imaginary other side of a conversation. I suspect, now, that that well-meaning attention is partly responsible for the mild autism from which people tell me I suffer (although not medical people, I might add). Perhaps, had I been left to myself... but such speculation is pointless. Perhaps it would be best if I move forward from such memories to the point at which I discovered the truth about my upbringing. As with all of my other major discoveries, I made it in the pages of a book. To this day, I cannot decide whether it was a mistake on the part of those pulling the strings of my parents, an omission which allowed some possible previous son or daughter to send me a message, or whether it was deliberate, an integral part of the plan.

The book was "Catcher in the Rye" - of course, another tale of teenage disconnection from the confusing and terrible world of adults. I'm not sure I'd say that I liked it particularly, but I found it interesting enough in itself. I will never forget the story, though, because of the ending. Holden describes his desire for the future, the duty that he wants to perform that will give him a meaning of sorts. And then my edition contains a few more lines, added in green ball-point ink, handwritten in a careful script: THEY ARE NOT REAL. THEY ARE BEING CONTROLLED BY THE ONES BEHIND THE SCENE. ACT ON IT SOON. THE SOONER THE BETTER.

I understood immediately - at least part of it, I suppose. I naively thought that it meant that my parents were working for someone else, or that they were constrained in their actions by the same observation cameras that monitored me. I only found out the whole truth when I followed the unknown author's instructions. They were vague, of course - the vaguest, you might argue. But I knew what it meant, because I knew one thing for certain about my parents; they had never lied to me.

So five months after my seventeenth birthday, I found my mother and father (or rather, the puppets in the shape of humans that I had called mother and father), and asked them who was controlling them. It is fair to say that I was not entirely prepared for the answer.