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    Bouncing off the Walls
    Bouncing off the Walls
    Bouncing off the Walls
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    Bouncing off the Walls

    By C.L. Trotman

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This is the story of my life and the lives of those Ive loved!

    There are quotes I have picked up over the years on every page and at the beginning of every chapter.

    This is not a very long book. But most of it was written out in longhand. Short and sweet, eh?

    My struggles have been many, but they have the happy ending of sanity with the help of medication.

    I hope it will be the inspiration of mental patients everywhere.

    I also really hope people will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXlibris NZ
    Release dateMay 24, 2018
    ISBN9781514466803
    Bouncing off the Walls
    Author

    C.L. Trotman

    I caught the disease Polio at age 7. i was paralyzed up to the armpits. It is a muscle wasting disease but sometimes it can affect the mind. i was left with a weak leg and schizoaffective disorder. This is nasty! A mixture of Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. A person suffering from this hears voices and suffers from mood swings Now Polio has come back to weaken me in my old age. I was fit and healthy till age 60. Nowdays Polio has been almost eradicated word=wide thanks to the Salk vaccine of the 1950's.

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      Book preview

      Bouncing off the Walls - C.L. Trotman

      Copyright © 2018 by C.L. Trotman.

      Library of Congress Control Number:     2018904301

      ISBN:                  Hardcover                978-1-5144-6682-7

                                   Softcover                  978-1-5144-6681-0

                                  eBook                         978-1-5144-6680-3

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

      Rev. date: 05/11/2018

      Xlibris

      0-800-443-678

      www.Xlibris.co.nz

      771614

      CONTENTS

      Chapter 1     Growing Up

      Chapter 2     Ancestors

      Chapter 3     Home life

      Chapter 4     Boarding at Bedlam

      Chapter 5     My Oldest Mate Paddy

      Chapter 6     The Gouda Cheese Factory and other Jobs

      Chapter 7     Overseas in a Fiat

      Chapter 8     Booze and Other Drugs

      Chapter 9     Margaret: My Lady Wife

      Chapter 10   More Pets

      Chapter 11   Warrick: My Ever-Loving Son

      Chapter 12   Cars and I

      Chapter 13   Bouncing off the Walls

      Chapter 14   Boob

      Chapter 15   Margaret Goes to Heaven

      Chapter 16   Random Thoughts

      Chapter 17   My Friend Johannah

      Chapter 18   What Has Helped Me

      To my mother, whose beauty of face, personality, and mind was

      only destroyed by her Roman nose.

      And to my father, a canny tradesman

      who always knew what to say and what to do.

      Also in memory of my friend Johannah.

      My Thanks

      My grateful thanks to Tom, who tirelessly printed and

      reprinted my original thoughts; Dr Rob Maunsell for his

      encouragement; my brilliant publisher, Diane; and Sister Tessa for

      her ideas.

      We mental patients have a short span of attention.

      This book has a fairly short span too. If it doesn’t feel

      complete I have to stop somewhere.

      The two greatest educators are the school of hard knocks,

      and your mistakes.

      Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet gives to the heel that

      crushed it.

      Mark Twain

      No man is good enough to govern another without that

      man’s consent. Abraham Lincoln

      Now is the winter of our discount tents.

      Tom

      The universe and Man’s stupidity are infinite though I am not

      so sure about the former.

      Albert Einstein

      We owe the men and women who fought and died for us

      overseas a debt we can never repay.

      CT

      The most horrifying thing I have read about the atomic bomb

      aftermath was ‘burning faces’ and ‘railway lines twisted into

      corkscrews’.

      A returned soldier

      Male circumcision is often barbaric. When done to a female, it

      is an abomination.

      CT

      Visit your friends often or weeds will close the unused path.

      Proverb

      Everyone should be respected, but no one idolised.

      Albert Einstein

      Examine what is said, not he who says it.

      Arabian proverb

      Invention is 95 percent perspiration and 5 percent

      inspiration.

      Thomas Edison

      •   If you plant for a year, plant If you plant for thirty years,

      plant a tree. If you plant forever, plant men.

      I may have done bad things, but that does not make me a bad

      man.

      Under a shabby hat is often a good man.

      Chinese proverb

      CHAPTER 1

      Growing Up

      My motto: I have seen much and I try to speak

      with care.

      My mother was born in the early 1920s, and my father was born not long before – on April Fool’s Day, a never-ending source of embarrassment for him.

      I was born in 1949, the year Mao Tse-tung’s Long March in China ended. I share my birthday with John Wayne – draw your own conclusion.

      I say with the greatest of pride that I am a Roman Catholic. It’s really my only true boast.

      I was the eldest of ten children when I was twelve. Did I forget to mention my mother had twins?

      My father was a builder-cum-undertaker, glazier, and paint merchant.

      We lived in a lovely little town. It is said that it takes a whole village to bring up a child, so I guess I was well brought up. Now the town has really changed – it has become the darling of the large city down the road. When I went to boarding school, they all made fun of my little town – not now, I’ll bet!

      My earliest memory is of staying with my family in the Otaki Camping Ground. Boy, I was gutless! My second sister put me to shame. She took the top bunk. I was four, and she was two.

      At Christmas every year, Dad would have a glass of whisky. Apparently, I was sitting next to him the year I was a one-year-old. You know what happened next, don’t you, dear reader? Yes, I downed the lot! I just happened to sleep for the rest of the day as you can well imagine. It was not to be my only time drunk, I assure you!

      Washing Billy was one of my favourite pastimes from when I

      It is far, far more important to be a good listener

      than speak too often.

      CT and Warrick

      was aged about two. Billy was a tomcat. Billy was often turfed out of his favourite chair to make room for my uncle. One day, after he had been laughed at, Billy walked up to him, sunk his claws into my uncle’s shin, and then stalked out!

      My next memory is of the dreaded polio when I was seven. Believe me, polio is not only a muscle-wasting disease. It affects the whole body and the mind too. My parents were told I would spend the rest of my life in an iron lung, but I showed the doctors they were wrong.

      When I became ill and collapsed and my cousins carried me home, the doctor said, ‘He’s malingering.’ But I was taken to the hospital. There, a nurse woke me up and said ‘to take a pill’. I did what the lady said but only after a struggle. Then she said, ‘Is the pill poison?’ That made me think – the pill might be poison!

      After that, I wouldn’t let just anybody give me my pills when that lady

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