Ever the sadist

Ten, maybe even five years ago I probably couldn't give you a clear definition of what a sadist was. But I've gotten my kicks from seeing other people suffer for as long as I can remember.

My earliest recollection of my sadistic tendencies extends to when I was probably only three or four years old. My baby sister was two years younger than me. I decided to pee into a cup and present to her as lemonade. The details of the incident are hazy, but I think she ended up drinking some of it and I enjoyed quite a chuckle.

Another early memory stands out in my mind: In kindergarten, when I was six years old, I had a female friend that I had known from carpool trips to preschool. In the classroom, right next to the door, there were little shelves with everyone's name on them that the teacher used to pass paperwork back to us. The name tags were made out of construction paper and were simply taped on. Early in the school year, I was hell bent on tearing my friend's name tag in two when I came into the classroom in the morning. As soon as the teacher put a new tag on, I would rip it again. This went on for three or four times until the teacher made a point to ask the whole class who kept on ripping my friend's name tag. There was complete silence in the room, and I dared not even look at the teacher (probably a dead give away). Nonetheless, I reasoned that the blame would shift away from me if I continued to rip the name tag. (After all, I thought, who in the classroom would dare rip it again after that stern talking-to?). My efforts were finally thwarted when the teacher covered the whole name tag in tape, making it impossible to tear. I never did get caught--at least I never got disciplined or yelled at--but I'm sure the teacher knew it was me. I certainly derived great joy in causing my friend that series of tiny hardships.

I once read that Internet trolls practice their trade because they want to bring everyone else down to their own level of inner misery. From experience, that sounds right to me; until recently I was an avid troll on sites like Slashdot. I would add that in addition to wanting to make people feel miserable (or at least annoyed), trolling for me was the only natural way to "socialize". I have never been able to carry on friendly dialog in Internet forums or instant messenger chats, especially not with strangers. The whole social networking craze scares me. But I have fantasized about having unlimited destructive power in games like SecondLife. I have spent a great deal of energy trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to subvert Slashdot's abuse filtering system.

I now understand that my sadistic nature (along with a whole lot of other issues, which I will get into over time) is a great impediment to my goal of achieving healthy relationships. Right now I am in the stages of fighting off my impulses, but I suspect they are deeply ingrained in my psyche. Only time will tell if I am successful. I realize that I am in for a lot of work, with failures and setbacks along the way.

A typical day

I thought about starting this diary with a systematic cataloging of my character flaws. Day 1: Self-hating. Day 2: Anti-social. Day 3: Immature. Day 4: Perfectionist. Yadda-yadda, blah, blah. That's a perfectly reasonable, yet perfectly boring way to start things out. I doubt that I'd make it to the third day before getting distracted and dropping this whole project. Instead, I'll offer a fairly detailed peek into a typical day of my life.

Let's start with the standard phone call to my wife when I left work yesterday. It followed the standard script:

Wife: Hello?
Me: Hey, it's me
Wife: What's happening?
Me: Oh, I'm just on the way home.
Wife: Yeah, did you have a good day?
Me: Pretty good.
Wife: That's good. Are you going to have to work late tonight?
Me: No, I don't think so. I got a decent amount done today.
Wife: Okay, well, are burgers okay for dinner
Me: Sure, sounds good....
etc.

As usual, I try to sound happy and friendly when I call my wife at the end of the day but I always end up sounding downbeat. It's hard to be cheerful when the voice on the other end almost never is.

When I arrive home, I find my wife reading to our 9-month old son. She's obviously trying to put him to bed. While he seems happy enough at the moment, my wife immediately lets me know that he's been extremely fussy. I smile at him and he smiles back. I want to pick him up and hold him and cuddle him but I know he needs to stick with the bedtime routine. Seeing my son always cheers me up. My thoughts drift to changing clothes so I can go outside and start grilling the burgers. Our 11-year old daughter is in her room with the door closed. "Hi, Dad!" she yells. "Hi Steph!" I call back, trying to sound happy. Shit, I think to myself. I forgot to say hi to her when I got home. It irritates me because slips like that give my wife ammunition against me. She makes mental notes and then reminds me of them when it comes time to criticize me about my behavior with Steph.

I go into the master bedroom and begin changing out of my work clothes and into something cooler and more comfortable. Shorts and an old T-shirt. Perfect for grilling. I hear my wife put our son, Derrick, in the crib and close the door to his room. He immediately begins wailing. I don't pay much attention to it because he's had a difficult time going to sleep the past few nights. We're trying to give him time to cry it out, ala the Ferber method. Suddenly I hear a large thunk coming from my daughter's room. My anger immediately swells. She's throwing her toys, I think. Like a predator on the hunt, I immediately head out of the bedroom and creep toward her door across the hall, opening it a crack so I can see what she is doing.

Steph is sitting among a large pile of toys in her room, mostly stuffed animals. A real mess. I see her pick up and throw a large, hard plastic baby doll directly at the lamp sitting on her nightstand. Thunk.

I throw open the door and pounce. Then I start my rapid fire yelling. "No throwing! Do you understand! No throwing! Are you supposed to throw toys?! Clean up your toys right now! No kitten and no froggy until you clean up!" I grab "kitten" and "froggy"--Steph's favorite toys at the moment--off the floor and hurl them out of sight into the master bedroom. She immediately begins wailing at the top of her lungs, sounding eerily familiar to the baby in the room next door. Oh great, I think. Now Derrick will never go to sleep. At the same time, I'm feeling smug for successfully catching our daughter misbehaving, and making her feel bad about it.