Long before social media put the spotlight and raised awareness of how much misinformation is bandied about…
Back in the 1960s, the decade of my adolescence; my mother, for reasons unknown to me at the time, abhored liars. I would catch so much hell if I attempted one that I stopped telling them.
I won’t get into her reasons except to say that it involved the church and her marriage to a minister whom she caught trying to kill their baby.
I’ve experienced some life in my 66 years and have had exchanges with many individuals, and the thing that continually fascinates me about humanity is our apparent need to misrepresent the truth.
I’m not trying to change anything. I just watch and listen. Which incidentally has me questioning most of what I have read about the past.
When I was a kid in the 1960s, the farmers could be heard lamenting about a changing world that they feared.
Beautiful stone cobbled streets of small towns were replaced with “The Shopping Mall Generation!” AND cities grew. “Who would grow the food?” The farmers asked.
But did anyone see this coming down the pike? A generation so smart that they make money while they sleep?
A generation who became so important that not having children became for them, the best option. Which is probably the best thing since we can no longer determine genders…
I am not afraid. I am not in control. I am embarrassed… or am I entertained?
In the beginning… I saw glimpses of what you might call normal in the living rooms and kitchen tables of schoolyard friends. Those friendships never lasted for me, and in time, they ceased to exist even in my memory…
My behavior? I guess it was odd. Angry and loud. Sullen and sad or boisterous and much too much. The invitations dried up and faded fast. “He is strange.” I often heard.
I was tolerated as a boy. Feared in larger shoes. I moved a lot. Shifting. Fading. Reappear like smoke in mist…
Spent some time in the shadows there, with others going nowhere. Found out I didn’t fit there either.
“You are strange.” I was told.
“What is this strange you speak of? I have nothing to compare with, really. I do not know this comparative myth of normalcy.”
In time, I grew quiet and introspective and listened to wise counsel who told me the source of my strange. I was childish, emotionally sensitive, and idealistic… and oh, so angry.
I looked into this-faced my fears, and asked for spiritual help.
Things are so much better, and I am far from normal. Being a bastard has shaped me. I couldn’t be with normal friends. Normal girls wouldn’t date me. They all let me know by rejection that I wasn’t worthy. This is what not having a father creates…
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