Jared Hawthorne

November Book Report

English and Computer Apps. 2

Oct. 9, 2000

" He had to learn to play his mother’s games in order to survive because she no longer considered him as a son, but a slave; and no longer a boy, but an ‘It.’"(back cover) Each day was a new struggle for my life and a new twisted game Mother would play with me. My childhood was full of abuse and fear and yet I never lost hope.

I am Dave Pelzer, and I wrote my autobiography called A Child Called "It." The copyright date was 1995 and it was published by Health Communications, Inc. There are one hundred fifty three pages.

My name is Dave Pelzer. When in elementary school, I didn’t look like your average boy. I had chipped teeth from Mother hitting me in to the tile counter. I was very skinny and was always seen with bruises on me (mostly on my face.) I liked to day dream about eating hamburgers, and pretending I was the king of the world. It would often take me away from the harsh reality of life, of Mother abusing me everyday. I’m definitely Intrapersonal because I was kept by myself all the time and wasn’t allowed to speak or even look at my two brothers. The strengths that helped me survive my childhood were to sit and think about how I could outsmart Mother and different ways to steal food. Interpersonal was my weakness because I was taught to keep to myself and was never around different kids to be social.

It was 1961 when I was born in Daly City, California, right next to San Francisco. I lived in the same house until I was twelve and then taken to a foster home. This book is based on my life from when I was born to the age of twelve. Although the Vietnam War was raging around us as and California was full of hippies and drugs, I was trying to survive my own situation by living day to day. I didn’t pay attention to the outside world.

The most interesting part of this book is when Mother turned form a very loving mom to an alcoholic child abuser, who treated me different then the rest of the world. Writing this book made me famous because it inspired many people. I changed people’s lives with this book because my example gave people the capability to better themselves, no matter the situation.

There is not just one conflict in my childhood that is the greatest, there are many. The conflicts started when I was four when Mother would punch and slap me in the face. In time they would lead to the most severe child abuse case in California’s history. Mother would often lock me in the bathroom with a bucket of ammonia and Clorox mixture, which would make a miniature gas chamber. After let out, I would cough up blood. She made me eat dishwashing soap and ammonia. The dishwashing soap made me burp bubbles and the ammonia almost killed me because it formed a bubble in my throat, which disabled me to breathe. Every night when the family would eat dinner I was forced to lie in the backyard in a prisoner of war position. Mother starved me for days at a time, the longest time she starved me was eleven. When no one was around was when I suffered my worst beatings, Mother once stabbed me in the chest, she told me I was making her life a living h*** so she showed me what that was and tried to burn me to death over the stove. Also, she tried to make me eat my kid brother’s defecation. I didn’t so she rubbed t in my face and up my nose. I had to be very smart to survive my childhood. A good tacit was to stall and waste as much time as possible. I would lay motionless on the ground as if I didn’t have enough energy until she got tired of hitting me.

`My determination to live and outsmart Mother was my best defense. I also had to be smart in finding food because Mother always starved me. This meant I had to steal it. Though I tried, Mother had ways of inspecting me. After getting home from school she would make me go to the bathroom and throw up in the toilet to see if I had stole food. One time I had stole some frozen hot dogs and some frozen tatter tots. I got home, was inspected, and she made me eat it again. Dogs wouldn’t even eat that.

The message is that I would have died without my determination to live. When a person has hope they can get through very bad times. Like in my case, a person's mind can help him or her survive harsh environments.