Who hurt you, caused damage like this?

A few weeks ago, a viral tweet popped up in my notifications. The handle was not someone I followed but the idea in the tweet was intriguing and had stimulated responses across generations and a lively debate was happening. The writer put out a suggestion that people born at a certain point in time were damaged because their parents allowed them free reign to read traumatising literature, horror stories in particular. 

Indeed, many respondents in the tweet dug into their childhoods and retrieved all the titles they had read. Some people said they still have nightmares to date because of the horrible tales. They see the bogeyman standing at the window on dark nights or the idea of rustling leaves on a rainy night gives them the heebie-jeebies. 

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I suspect that for some people here, their nightmares will have come from different sources, not just the written word. Some of us have lived real horrors and that is the stuff that haunts us. 

Depending on your age, your parents may have told you of the terrible times they lived through in some war or another. Some did not live to tell the tale. When I compared our experiences with those of the respondents in the tweet, I realised that much of the stuff that keeps us awake at night are things we have lived, not works of fiction stirring up our imagination. 

If it were a game of “I know it better”, we would score top marks, scoffing at those softies who were busy hiding under their beds shaking with novels in hand while we ran from gunfire, abductors and wartime butchers; molesters and whatnot.

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That is one angle. However, beyond the suggestion that the horror stories were responsible for a damaged generation, the writer insinuates a laissez-faire or hands off parenting style which allowed children to get their hands on horror rated material, with no filters applied. Again, it has been argued that was not altogether a bad thing. 

There is a certain group of adults who will tell you that being allowed to get up to all kinds of adventures under minimum supervision taught them lesson or two along the way and left them a more enabled generation compared to the overprotected lot. 

Upon reflection and interaction with many educators in recent times, I have also realised that depending on who you got in the classroom, the lightbulbs went on in the head or the lights died down and darkness descended when the Physics, Mathematics or Geography teacher entered class. 

Ask some people to return to their school days and you will find that education is what forms their nightmares. Like parenting and governance, the wrong variety of school instruction can lead to lasting damage.

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When all is said and done, who is responsible for our particular brand of damaged? Who hurt you and turned you into what you are? Why are you like that? Ask the question in any form you like. 

The possible answers took me down memory lane and they could perhaps make us think back some odd 60 years ago to independence. 

Although it could be argued that we were not altogether an innocent infant nation by 1962, we need to reflect on the negligent national leaders, parents, belligerent brothers and sisters and the library of horror stories both fictional and real that we have been exposed to since. 

We are a small country with a huge capacity to shock with the amount of sadism, absurdity and some downright evil. 

Who in our past hurt us and left us damaged like this?

Ms Nampewo is a writer, editor and communications consultant     
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