Only the privileged can afford to be WOKE

When he was just four his junkie mother tied him to a chair as she got high. He was fostered – and later became an alcoholic. Today he is a Cambridge scholar. And if there’s one thing Rob Henderson’s struggles taught him, it’s that...

Troubled Rob Henderson Forum £16.99

Rob Henderson’s first memory is from when he was three. He is sobbing, clinging to his mother as the police take her away. For some of his short life the pair had lived in a car, his father having abandoned them. When their home was a Los Angeles slum his mother would tie a crying Rob to a chair with a bathrobe, so she could take drugs in another room without being interrupted.

The most recent episode mentioned in Henderson’s book, on the other hand, concerns one of his fellow doctoral students at Cambridge University, who asks him why he forces himself to get up early every morning and go rowing on the river. The story of what happened in between these two moments makes for a compelling and thought-provoking read.

After being taken from his birth mother, Henderson, right, was placed with a foster family. A few months later he was moved to another one. He cried again. At the age of four, as he watched TV, ‘I remember being confused that the people had different kinds of families than we did.’ The next time he moved families, ‘I didn’t cry. I was dejected, but the tears didn’t come. I’d learnt to shut down, sealing myself off from my emotions.’

He noticed that one of his families preferred to foster young boys ‘because we were ideal for performing chores’. Henderson had to clean the swimming pool, but was rarely allowed to swim in it.

By this time some of his temporary siblings had introduced him to beer, minor crime (pickpocketing, stealing handbags) and swearing. His favourite word was ‘mother **** er’, because ‘it was the word my teacher reacted to most when I said it’.

At the age of eight, Henderson was finally adopted, rather than fostered. His new fouryear-old sister told him he could play with her toys: ‘This act of kindness is burned so deeply into my memory that I will never forget it.’

But his newfound happiness at gaining a permanent family didn’t last long. One day his parents tearfully announced that they were getting divorced. Then his father refused to see him, because he knew this would hurt him, which in turn would hurt his mother.

A major reason for the divorce was that Henderson’s mother had realised she was gay. Henderson went to live with her and her new partner, Shelly. By now he had a therapist, who he told: ‘I get why girls would like girls, but don’t get how boys can like boys… Boys are gross.’

The book is great on detail. Food forms a theme, from the earliest days in foster homes – where not eating quickly enough meant one of the other children might take items from your plate. Later, stationed in Germany with the US Air Force (which he joined at 17), Henderson visited his girlfriend’s house and sensed her mother watching him at the table, because he was using his fork to cut the food. A whispered instruction from his girlfriend put him right.

Joining the military helped Henderson – and his mother, whose ‘US Air Force Mom’ licence plate got her off speeding tickets – but the legacy of his childhood still loomed. It had taught him never to get too attached to anyone. Splitting up from his girlfriend, he went into rehab for alcoholism. Real salted vation came in the form of academia. Having become intrigued by the elite Yale University, he worked hard and gained admission as a mature student.

Hearing about his childhood, one professor commented: ‘You were forged in a fire.’ His past certainly coloured the way Henderson saw his fellow students. He criticises their ‘luxury beliefs’ – standpoints taken to show off their moral superiority, but which are actually damaging.

One girl told him that the ‘traditional’ family is outdated, but when questioned admitthat she herself would be getting married and raising her children with a husband. Similarly he questions why ‘fat-shaming’ is seen as wrong, when obesity is so bad for your health: ‘It’s cruel to validate decisions that inflict harm.’

And Henderson has no time at all for the bizarre language of modern campus life – ‘heteronormative’, ‘cisgender’, ‘cultural appropriation’ and the like. He has even heard criminals described as ‘justiceinvolved persons’.

‘Only the affluent can afford to learn strange vocabulary,’ he writes, ‘because ordinary people have real problems to worry about.’

What makes the book particularly interesting is Henderson’s awareness that neither problems nor their solutions are ever simple. Even as he was being rejected by adult after adult, he could see that some of his problems were self-inflicted – his upbringing was tough but he knows that no one forced him to take drugs or set fire to people’s lawns.

And despite being a devoted reader, he took care never to be seen with a book: ‘I didn’t want anyone to accuse me of being smart, because that would mean that I would have to acknowledge that I wasn’t living up to my potential. I wanted to keep expectations low, both from others and from myself.’

In the end, he agrees with the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that ‘man in his fragile boat has the rudder placed in his hand’. Or, to use Henderson’s own image, ‘we’re not billiard balls travelling along pre-ordained trajectories with no say in the matter’.

For all the modern obsession with ‘motivation’, he knows that what you actually need is self-discipline. ‘Motivation is just a feeling. Self-discipline is: “I’m going to do this regardless of how I feel.”’

So why does he get up early every day to go rowing on the river? ‘It imposes structure on my life.’