{"id":711,"date":"2013-08-28T01:03:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T01:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=711"},"modified":"2013-12-12T13:05:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T13:05:50","slug":"kindness-for-oz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=711","title":{"rendered":"Kindness for Oz and his traveling scars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_0311\"<\/a>
\nPool attendants view games as prizes hang overhead, music blares and Oz tells a Brothers Grimm story, his own. <\/strong><\/p>\n

“My mother slew me, my father ate me.”<\/strong>
\nMurdered son comes back as a bird with this song: The Juniper Tree; By The Brothers Grimm<\/em><\/p>\n

Oz is a 44-year-old, trim carny with a shaved head and a deep, long scar traveling from behind his right ear, across his jugular, to his Adam’s apple.<\/p>\n

Today, he joked, “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t glued on.” He looked at me, holding back my joke, and said “Some people tried to help me with that not long ago.”<\/p>\n

His throat was slashed a month and a half ago and now he’s working with me on the midway. <\/p>\n

People often mention his cut throat when they first meet him and he says “I never went down.”<\/p>\n

Today, he wanted to talk about a story I already had overheard him telling a couple days ago.<\/p>\n

With horrifying nonchalance, he said he was a “just a little boy” when his mother and aunt stripped him naked, tied him to a tree and told him coyotes were coming to bite off his penis.<\/p>\n

Drunk, hiding in the woods, they made noises and laughed as he screamed.<\/p>\n

“There was no moon that night, I couldn’t see anything. All I could do was listen to the noises.”<\/p>\n

He can remember everything from that night – sights, sounds and questions. <\/p>\n

“Mommy, why are you doing this to me.”<\/p>\n

He ended the story as he had the first time.<\/p>\n

“That was before all the foster homes and juvenile detention homes.”<\/p>\n

It was a sunny, hot day as I listened to him. In the background were, “Despicable Me” minions, sock monkeys, Smurfs and Scooby Doos each stuffed and hung. <\/p>\n

Rock-n-roll and disco boomed. Happy families walked the midway – mothers with their sons.<\/p>\n

How can this man even function, I thought. What kind of world is he seeing on the midway, with his throat cut so theatrically and his psyche so slashed to ribbons.<\/p>\n

As if Oz is a character in a Brothers Grimm story with all the violence and cruelty to children and with a meaning I cannot comprehend.<\/p>\n

He actually said, “Life hasn’t been kind to me, Mike.”<\/p>\n

Kind!<\/p>\n

As he walked back to the pool tables, he turned with an intense smile and turned again back to the games.<\/p>\n

“I have foster brothers and sisters but this (carnival family<\/em>) is my real family … Pool Sir? Pool?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pool attendants view games as prizes hang overhead, music blares and Oz tells a Brothers Grimm story, his own. “My mother slew me, my father ate me.” Murdered son comes back as a bird with this song: The Juniper Tree; By The Brothers Grimm Oz is a 44-year-old, trim carny with a shaved head and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4qqmC-bt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=711"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1107,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711\/revisions\/1107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}