Sarah Bryan

Please sign the Petition at change.org to rename the Sarah B. Bryan Memorial Scholarship, University of Maryland,

Department of Fire Protection Engineering

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https://www.change.org/NoChildAbuse

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Sarah grew up in Oklahoma in the 1930s and was abusive and bigoted, which she apparently got from her own mother who could barely go five minutes without spewing out one racial epithet or another and had the personal warmth of an ice cube. Her sisters seem to have been similar. Sarah had a complex about her brother who had gone to Yale for grad school and then married someone from NY who was relatively bright and had gone to Barnard. Fine, sure, whatever. But Sarah was so ludicrously petty and insecure that she couldn't handle much of anything, which was then compounded by a decade and a half of failed pregnancies (while the brother and sister-in-law quickly popped out three babies). It also didn't help that she was stupid as a rock, utterly incurious, barely able to read and could never really deal with my not being as screechingly ignorant as she and mini-monster daughter Joan were.

So we had the whole anti-learning bit. She made it perfectly clear by early in elementary school that she had no intention of letting me go to a decent college ("THE EDUCATION AT OXFORD AND HARVARD IS AWFUL!!! THEY JUST READ BOOKS AND GO DISCUSS THEM WITH THE PROFESSOR!!! I'VE NEVER HEARD OF SUCH A THING!!!"). But as with pretty much everything else, she was too incompetent ultimately to pull that one off, but she certainly tried and was a complete pig throughout. One of her favorite tricks was to screech "YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET AN 'A' AND YOU MAY NOT EVEN PASS!!!" if I wanted to take any semi-decent course (mainly languages) outside the crap local secondary schools and then not let me. I ultimately just got books on my own and did it myself - as if Sarah had any clue, could actually really read herself, or cared for much of anything beyond her various grudges and incredibly fragile ego.

It seemed basically to be an expression of multiple insecurities - her own weaknesses, comparing herself to her brother (and his wife) - as well as a general level of laziness, incuriosity, and bigotry that made her terrified of in any way disturbing her extraordinarily narrow and limited view of the world. Same for Joan, though they both compulsively tried (in Joan's case, still tries) to pretend they knew more than they did - though it was mainly a collection of their own idiocies, emotional immaturity and narrow-mindedness. Sarah, in her infinite wisdom, took out her ridiculous inferitority complex about her brother on me. She would constantly hit, slap, threaten, bully, mimic, make homophobic remarks about me as a child. Ever the charmer and ever predictable, she was a piece of shit when I came out ("SO YOU WANT A GAY LIFESTYLE, HUH?!!!") with mini monster Joan predictably joining in as well ("HOW DARE YOU!! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!!!!!").

To add typical Sarah idiocy and incompetence to the bigotry she was also screeching, "HE'S NOT GOING TO GET A JOB!!!!!!!!!". This, of course, was the companion piece to her "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO FOR A JOOOOOOOBBBBBB???!!!!!" growing up even as she did everything she could to keep me out of a decent uni or much else if I had paid more attention to the braindead bigot than I unfortunately did  ("SO YOU WANT A CAREER, HUH?!! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!!!!!!!"; SO YOU HAVE VISIONS OF GRANDEUR, HUH?!! YOU HAVE TO HAVE THE SCHOOL AND THE JOB, HUH?!!!") . And then she, of course, showed up at graduation and couldn't conceive that people weren't doing her idea of "normal jobs" but were doing perfectly standard bits at far better salaries etc. than she had the slightest clue about in her willfully ignorant, 1940s or whatever it was bigot conception. She considered it perfectly normal and justified to be fired for being gay while being too stupid to realize it was 1992, I lived in San Francisco, worked for organizations (like most places at the time) for which it would never be an issue and had more than sufficient qualifications and experience in general (not that Sarah, typically, had the foggiest idea what any of that might be). Like Joan, Sarah could never be much bothered with details, specifics or common sense. Screeching, yes. Lazy-assed assumptions and laziness in general? Yep. Anything else? Not much.

I don’t think she really wanted children (IT'S ALWAYS THE MOTHER'S FAULT, HUH?!!!!!"). She seemed to do it simply because she thought it was expected and she had nothing else to do and no particular talent, ability or interests. There was really no positive point to any of it and she was ludicrously incompetent and counterproductive with what she did do. She was fundamentally incompetent at pretty much everything she ever got her grubby little paws on yet simply doubled down and pretended she had a clue (which generally consisted of her screeching louder and grabbing/hitting some more). The screeching, the hitting, the insults, the perpetual anxiety and panic. the general gross ignorance and inability to handle even the most basic of tasks without hysterics and endless screeching drama. She was one of those people who seem more driven by grudges and insecurities than anything else. She complained but never really did anything constructive. She spent over a decade miscarrying (and still births and dead babies) – supposedly some blood type incompatibility (per John who tended to make excuses) though she also couldn't be bothered to stop smoking and drinking while pregnant.

She tried to spoil Joan, which was a pathetically bad idea. So we ended up with Joan screaming and performing right and left, rubbing sand into my back at the beach, kicking, throwing food, tennis rackets, tennis balls whatever she had around. Then there were the mutual screeching hysterics of illiterate Sarah pretending to teach illiterate Joanie how to read. And the recurring theatrics of Sarah performing in one room and Joan in another. Shamelessly empty Joanie, of course, copied all of Sarah's "look at me" performance art line readings ("I'M VERY ANGRY!!!!!") and continues to use them. I cracked my head open when I was two after I ran into a wall shuttling between Joan's temper tantrum in the kitchen and Sarah's competing temper tantrum in the living room. Of course, Sarah was so incompetent she couldn't even take me to the doctor but had to call my father to come back from work and drive me - which simply wasted an hour while I lay there while Sarah sat around doing nothing beyond shoving me into the bathroom so I didn't bleed on her indoor outdoor carpet squares.

There were also Sarah's pronounced bigotries, which at least in part mimicked her own mother who could barely have a conversation without spewing out one racial epithet or another - though she at least had some sense of what she could not say in front of most people and expected people not to say anything. "The blacks" was always lingering (as with her mother). The two male teachers in the local elementary school were the targets of the homophobic asides. And for some reason Europe set her off - which I think mainly reflected whom she happened to randomly meet, particularly if they were smarter than Sarah (not difficult) or not inclined to play along with her usual shallow and non-sensical remarks. So she would fume about the French woman in her office once she went back to work, and the Danish woman down the street who was the mother of a friend in my class (petty as always she would refuse to let me go with them to the movies when they invited me).  

In the second grade when we were doing mock presidential elections for the 1972 election, I was supposed to make a little speech for Nixon (yes, since that's who Sarah decided she would vote for).

She started in on one of her endless little monologues about how awful McGovern was (we never really got to what was positive about Nixon). It basically came down to him not being "tough enough" on "the blacks". Her conclusion was that it would be pointless to vote for McGovern in any event since "he'll just be shot anyway" which she seemed to think was entirely logical and acceptable. Being a seven-year-old and not tuned into the nuances of Sarah's saying one thing to one audience and another to someone else, I of course concluded my little second-grade "why we should vote for Richard Nixon" spiel by noting that, well, McGovern would just be shot anyway. Needless to say, folks noticed that one - and, of course, knew that a seven year old did not just pull that out of the air themselves - and complained to Sarah about her comment. In a classic Sarah move, she was of course not concerned that she had made the comments, or what they said about her, or that she was spewing this stuff out at home. What bothered her - and made her absolutely furious and started her screeching and hitting - was that I was supposed to know not to mention what she said to anyone else. 

Sarah refused to listen to teachers (not that she really listened to anyone), refused to put me in decent schools, made fun of me for studying and wanting to learn, tried to keep me from applying to decent colleges, broke my hand and then sent me to school like that, refused to get help for my ulcerative colitis (“just use Vaseline, that’s what I do”), refused to talk to me when I got into Yale like her brother, screamed at me for going to a similar school (with scholarships, as if she was paying for it - "So, you have to have THE school, huh?!!"; "You may be going to a FANCY SCHOOL, but...(whatever her current fixation happened to be)!!"), would come into my room when I was little and couldn’t sleep and scream at me and hit me. She would be furious if another parent or teacher complimented me. She would start talking about Joan and then make fun of me or hit me. She would denigrate me in front of others. Stomped around flapping her mouth about how she was going to “knock some heads together” and how she was “not here to be popular”. She would go into a rage if the toilet overflowed or the thermostat was set one degree too cold for her taste. Joan perpetually copied her including the hysterics, bigotry, temper tantrums and badmouthing people behind their backs.

If I asked for something Sarah’s response would inevitably be “NO! We’re not going to do that!” (a phrase Joan picked up as well). If Joan then asked the same thing, no problem. “THAT’S A GOOD ONE!” in a snotty, derogatory tone followed by sarcastic snort was another favorite construction: in high school when I said I was thinking about careers (“So you want to have a career, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!); when I wanted to do ballet (“So you want to be Baryshnikov or something, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!”); when I asked if we could have a conversation at dinner rather than watching TV (“So you want to have an intellectual discussion, huh?! THAT’S A GOOD ONE!”); when I wanted to apply to a decent college - and Sarah and Joan, of course, could barely read ("So you have to have THE school, huh?!! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!!); the snotty remarks when I would be reading ("What?! You want to be 'well-read' or something?!! THAT'S A GOOD ONE!"). Other favorites (predictably mimicked by insecure, brain-dead Joanie) were the always lovely "I'M NOT HERE TO BE POPULAR!!!", "I'LL JUST KNOCK SOME HEADS TOGETHER!!!", and "YOU'RE NOT GONNA LIKE IT!!!" - all interspersed with much hitting, slapping, grabbing, shoving. Then we, of course, had the freakish "THAT'LL PUT THE FEAR OF GOD INTO YOU!!!!!!!" though Sarah was hardly religious, couldn't be bothered with church and could barely get off her ass even for Christmas.

She was always complaining about money, but primarily only for me. She and Joan went shopping every weekend at the overpriced shopping malls with much typically endless production. She refused to do anything I wanted to do on the weekends even when it was free (museums, special libraries, the park or the lake). All she said was “I don’t want to” (another phrase Joan picked up along with “I don’t care!” and “I’m a loudmouth white woman!” the latter meant to be a compliment). Though, admittedly, except for the weekly Joan shopping trips she was fairly lazy and did little but watch TV and play with her sewing machine.

My father John L. Bryan hid with his work and refused to bother most of the time. He generally couldn't be bothered to talk to me. Nothing mean spirited. He simply didn't really care or want to be bothered. Which is perfectly fine, but also one of many reasons he should have done away with the pretense and simply not have children. I’m not sure he even knew when my birthday was; he certainly didn’t acknowledge it. Again, nothing mean-spirited. It simply never occurred to him. He would either be away or simply stand there while Sarah stomped around, hitting, grabbing and threatening. He was vaguely prejudiced as well - different times, different mores, a family tradition of less than saintly beliefs - though it was harder to tell since he rarely spoke and even more rarely spoke about anything but his work. When I did a hypnosis session for study skills Sarah freaked out – started grabbing me and screaming that it was going to damage her “credit rating” and that she was going to “institutionalize” me – a typical sort of threat she liked to fling around about abandoning or hurting me. John just stood there not saying anything, as usual.

Sarah also had the odd, trash habit of obsessing over and bragging about her credit cards like it was some accomplishment. She would not shut up about her stupid Bloomingdales credit card (or “Bloomies” as she insisted on calling it). She was too ignorant and shallow to notice that no one cared and she was just making a fool of herself. It was always like she was stuck in a particularly violent, ignorant, bigoted section of 1940 Oklahoma or something since she never read or listened to people or went much of anywhere or did anything but storm around the house, watch TV or play with her sewing machine. She refused to associate with one family because their clothes were too “dirty”; refused to associate with another because they were “too smart” and “not normal”. Not that anyone wanted to be around her or ever invited her anywhere.

Sarah was an unpleasant, insecure, shallow, barely literate and violent individual with grudges against her brother, his wife and basically anyone else who refused to put up with her nonsense. She would go into panics when she drove, freak out that John’s plane was going to crash or he was going to get into a car accident, was afraid to go downtown because of the “blacks”, locked herself up in her basement room playing with her sewing machine for hours on end before storming out to screech and flip on the TV. A pet, of course, was out of the question. If a cat came into our yard, she would storm outside screeching, throw water at it, and try to kick it. 

When my colon almost ruptured after 10 plus years of ulcerative colitis (and Sarah's neglect of that when I was a teenager) and I had to have an emergency hospitalization Sarah told me not to “bother” her. A few months later when, as a result, I was in the hospital for two weeks having my colon removed she came out for the first week with John. She couldn't even bother to talk to me; didn’t even say hi. The only thing she would do was randomly mention some vaguely gay-themed movie she claimed to have seen and then say she didn’t like it (“I saw The Crying Game. I didn’t like it”; “I saw Midnight Cowboy, I didn’t like it”). She had no real friends, hated animals, people, you name it.

If one wants to try to squint and fudge and make excuses folks can pretend Sarah "didn't know any better" (Joan's excuse, while shamelessly copying Sarah) or was copying her own apparently deeply unpleasant mother (which was true; as Joan in turn copied Sarah). But, ultimately, Sarah was what she was and it is as indefensible now as it was then. In any event, it is long past time UMD stopped playing along with this nonsense. And certainly don't pretend to quote me as a character reference.

Sarah Bryan

Joan Bryan

John L Bryan