June Benefield: Guess who’s the scapegoat

This column was originally published on July 1, 1970. Brady native June Benefield Hinckley began her journalism career in Houston working as a cub reporter for the Houston Press in the 1940s. In 1956, she began writing “Skirt Tales,” a three-days-a-week column that pulled from her experiences with her family. The column was a regular feature in the Chronicle well into the 1970s. Some of her writings and speeches were published in 1972 in the book “Laughing to Keep From Crying.” The mother of three and wife of 56 years died in 2003 in Austin at the age of 81.

Some psychologists claim that every family chooses one of its members to be the scapegoat…the whipping boy…the resident oaf.

The first time that I heard this theory expounded, I thought to myself: “baloney,” but that was last year when we were using the middle kid as the oddball.

It was also previous to a new balloting which changed the order of things and put me in the hot seat. Obviously it was done without my knowledge or consent.

Since no official announcement was made of the vote and subsequent election, it was sometime before I realized that I had become the chosen one…the one who failed to put the dog out…the one who does everything wrong…the goof-off…the incompetent…and the guilty party in every instance where the villain was otherwise unknown.

I became suspicious when a member of the family criticized my cooking by saying, “Only you could mess up a bowl of Jell-O.”

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When the entire brood nodded in agreement, I could see that I was in some kind of trouble.

The next day it was “your orange juice,” with the inference that I couldn’t even add three cans of water to a frozen product and come up with something worth drinking. 

In recent weeks I have been accused of causing chinch bugs, fender dents, torn underwear, outgrown bathing trunks, a carpet burn, a broken lamp, putting a spoon in the disposal, bad grades in math, a lost boyfriend, flat bosoms, large thighs, cavities, near sightedness, a broken window pane, losing the mail and over-drafting.

The number of items I am supposed to have lost or thrown away ranges from a pair of tennis shoes to a library book entitled “Sex Before 20” and a motorcycle handbook.

One of the strange things behind this phenomenon is the utter helplessness of the scapegoat. The thing mushrooms until you get to the point where you really cannot do anything right. The harder you try the more you fail.

I would expect the previous office holder would offer some sympathetic understanding, but she has been strangely reluctant to come to my defense. But I don’t much blame her.

She was dethroned after a 10-year reign and it is a post to which no one seeks re-election.