Lessons Learnt as a Baby in a Red Plastic Tub

Even now, six decades later,

He recalls so very clearly,

When he was two, maybe three,

As a baby, in a red plastic tub,

Having his daily morning bath,

Boiling water being poured on him,

And ouch! That really hurting him,

And he protesting pathetically,

Pleading with them to stop,

And they refusing to listen,

Being stone deaf to his pleas,

Barking, instead, angrily:

“It’s for your good, you see,

So, shut up now and just do

Exactly as we say to you."

Even now, in his life’s evening stage,

He shudders when he does recall

Scalding water being poured on him,

Mug after mug, early each morning,

And his plea to the grown-old folks:

“Please stop! Please stop! ! It pains me so,

It’s burning up my baby skin, you see!”

And them brusquely telling him off:

“Shut up now, and do as you're told”,

Insisting that they know much better

About what’s good for him than he.

That infancy trauma in that tub,

The scalding water every day,

Their tyranny and his pathetic cry,

Shaped his life in such a way

As it unfolded over the years

That it made him recoil instinctively

Each time that he happened to face

Brutality from such grown-old folks,

Their cruelty and just plain stupidity,

Fleeing from them whenever he could,

But when not possible, then speaking up,

Voicing it out like when he was small,

When in that little red plastic tub,

Each day he would pathetically cry:

“Please stop, you’re hurting me”,

While also refusing firmly to yield  

To their demand to shut up obediently.

Bringing this to mind, he now can say

That he’s grateful for that lesson

Which he learnt then as a little child,

From his daily bath in that plastic tub,

For without that traumatic experience,

He might never have come to know

The importance of speaking one's heart

When the Inner Voice says one should

And refusing to be just one of the herd

In blind, unthinking conformity.

Musing thus he here suggests

An experiment that you could do:

Bring to mind your earliest memory,

Of back when you were a child.

You might be surprised to find

What a crucial role it has played

In how your life has turned out,

Making you, several years on,

The person that you are now.