I would have to say that as a young child I was quite happy. My daughter laughs at me sometimes because when I hear some young person complain I quickly tell them, "What are you whining about?Life hasn't had a chance to truly crush you yet just wait until it really puts it's heel on you." I was very curious and friendly some would even say a chatterbox. Of course some would say I lacked a sense of personal space and that I didn't know when it was appropriate to speak in conversations. I quite often heard the phrase, "Stop interrupting!" Then there was my favorite thing daydreaming and fiddling with my hands. I got teased mercilessly for this at school. I would place my thumb on the top of the second knuckle of each finger starting with the pointer all the way to the pinky and back again. Initially I would do it with both hands and stare out the window content and utterly at peace, but as the teasing got progressively worse I tried to control it or hide it. I don't do it that much today but my wife says I still do it. Now don't misunderstand and think that I didn't have any friends. I had a small group of friends and they were the light to my darkness at that time. You could say hope had not been massacred. The bullying counteracted by the goodness of my friendships gave me a rich feeling of a world where good and evil were at war with each other. I even still trusted my parents at that point. Of course my early teachers were a different story. I had difficulty early on with writing, grammar and reading. The teacher was not very poised in the way she handled me and the students caught on and I began to be called retard and stupid. So I am the daydreaming retard who does funny things with his hands. My parents were told I wasn't mature enough to go to first grade and that I needed to do kindergarten for another year. Yes! I flunked kindergarten! Needless to say I was so frustrated with being called a retard and with being given a hard time about my handwriting that today you could match my cursive up with a cursive manual. I still have a hard time speaking. Throughout my elementary school years I had a bully or bullies stalking me the entire way and friends encouraging me to beat the odds as well. I felt I could still overcome and I resisted my first impression by digging into studying with an aggressive attitude. By my 6th grade year the teasing had changed to look at the egghead nerd who does funny stuff with his hands. My heart was still soft and kind but there was still time for that to change.
My father spent some 24 years serving in the Air Force and one of the duty stations that we stayed at longest was Little Rock Air Force Base. In the many years that my father served as a C-130 loadmaster he developed a lifelong love for aviation which he still enjoys today. In my childhood however he felt quite awkward as a parent and dived into his work in away that left us often wondering who he was. His dedication to his work meant he was the best at his profession and so was invited to be an instructor. I may not have seen him very often and I may not have had a very good relationship with him, however his instructor position in Arkansas gave my childhood a moment of stability for some good memories. The thing is that for every child there is a moment when some incident or set of incidents happens and they realize the world is not safe. That humans are not moral and above other animals but are rather a higher species of pack animals. On a lighter note, L.R.A.F.B. was a great place ...
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