Call for submissions: on the familial transmission of self-denial

At lunch today, my dining companion offered me some of her food as a taster. My ingrained reaction was to say oh, no thank you, even though my gluttony genes were all switched on, fully expressed in the most rapacious phenotypical configurations (ie I did want some).

We talked about where that automated response came from. For me, it's embedded in my implicit childhood training, when the messages I think I got were:

• Don't show off


• Don't make everyone look at you


• Don't show us up [by displaying you childish emotional behaviour]


• Don't be greedy


• Be grateful


• Don't make a fuss

The meta-message I think I inferred from this was: You don't deserve good things; anything good you get is not down to merit, but fraudulence and manipulation. Irrational, of course, and not what my parents intended, but I was young, and I didn't have at my command the sophisticated analytical tools I now have (ahem).

With that irrational foundation securely laid, I could then go on and get it reinforced. An emblematic reinforcement: I had a friend at junior school called Kevin. He had snaggly teeth, and he smelt a bit plasticky, but hey, we were friends. One day, we swapped some things: I gave him a disintegrating rubber monster that sat on the end of a pencil (gonk?), and he gave me a rather snazzy Captain Scarlet portfolio -- a soft plastic wallet with lots of Captain Scarlet goodies inside...pictures, information cards, and so on (all that good listy stuff that collecting-obsessed little boys love). It wasn't a fair trade in financial terms, but we were happy with it: it was one of those 'exchange of items betokening friendship' rituals, I guess, the kind that Hans von Schliefen observed in his 1867 expedition to Eastern Borneo, and which he documented in his seminal book, Die Borneanien und Ihren Freundschaft Mutualische Gegiftengegeben. (I recommend it, it's a classic.)

Sadly, my mum had never heard of von Schliefen (nor Munchhausen), and as soon as she saw me come through the door with my precious new wallet, she said "Where did you get that?" (it was obvious that I couldn't have bought it, as my pocket money was more in the 'one gobstopper and a bag of salt' ballpark. When I told her, she demanded that I "take it straight back".

Ever the dutiful son and rule abider (and anxious not to make a fuss), I set off towards Kevin's estate. The only snag was that I didn't know his address. However, my desire to do as I was told -- and not to be greedy, or keep things that I didn't deserve -- overcame my anxiety about walking around the unfamiliar council estate on the other side of the main road, across the big roundabout. By some fluke, I saw Kevin playing on the grass between the blocks of flats. The late afternoon sun was shining on the white painted metal balcony fences. We had to climb a gloomy concrete staircase to reach Kevin's mum's flat, which smelt of gravy and the hot valves in the TV. He was reluctant to part with his rotting rubber monster (even though another one of its legs had dropped off), but eventually I persuaded him to my mum's point of view.

So I returned home with the rubber monster sticking to my hot palm, and I felt a bit disgruntled. But at least I followed the rules, and didn't have something that I hadn't earned.