Glassy Burgers

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

3rd Grade

When I think of hamburgers now I think of wonderfully, juicy chargrilled burgers. Warm and hearty. That was not always the case. When I was in third grade I had the wonderful opportunity to have some glassy burgers. If you have been here before, you know my parents were not the best of parents. In fact they were extremely abusive...mainly my mother.

I remember one summer day, it was a saturday afternoon and just my mother and I were in the kitchen. She had made me a hamburger...just me. My father was at work and I cannot recall where my brother was. It looked good. It was the average hamburger on a whitebread hamburger bun. I took a bite. I felt a crunch. I chewed again and I felt more crunching. It was glass. Glass in that hamburger. She had put it in. I just know it. My gut told me so and continues to tell me so to this day. I spit out what was in my mouth and told her it was crunchy like glass. I was not going to eat anymore.

She just looked at me and then told me not to eat it. There was not any of the normal alarm or panic a mother would have if their child had just eaten glass. Imagine what glass, ground up can do to your insides. Not a good thing at all. She just calmly told me not to eat it if it was crunchy. I rinsed out my mouth but there was still glass in it. I felt crunching for a few more minutes. I brushed my teeth and still from time to time there was crunching for the next few hours.

There was only a hamburger for me...not hamburgers made for the whole family. She did not eat one. I felt this was very strange and it dawned on me that even more that I was an unwanted child. Always had been an unwanted child.

Soon after that I began to have all sorts of stomach problems that lasted for months. I would eat and get sick. I was constanely throwing up and deemed to have a delicate stomach. I was not really taken to the doctor to get any help. I was doctored up at home with lots of Pepto Bismol. I began to eat ever so slightly and soon I got the name of "Chicken Bones" because I was so thin. So thin that for years, my mother tried to fatten me up by making me eat a piece of bread with butter on it and a glass of milk each night before I went to bed.

I do not know if she was trying to undo what she had done. I will never know. How do you ask your mother if she is trying to poison you or kill you? To this day I have gastro problems..lower and upper GI issues. I know they started in childhood. Ground glass and lord knows what else can do damaging things to a small child.