When I was growing up, times were tough. WW2 was in full swing, and the sons of neighbors were dying in places my parents had never heard of.
When I was growing up, I didn’t know we were poor. Material things were adequate. Love, support and family were abundant .
When I was growing up, color, religion and ethnicity did not exist in my life. We were kids. No more, no less.
When I was growing up, I never heard the word gay used in other then a positive connotation which related to being happy.
When I was growing up, we had boys and girls and I knew which one I was and which bathroom to enter. Gender never entered my classroom.
When I was growing up, my friends and I would play outside until it was time to go home to supper, which in my home was 6 o’clock. And you did not want to be missing. We always ate together.
When I was growing up, my dad had medical problems which prohibited him from working, so I mowed lawns, shoveled snow, had two paper routes, and, while in high school, worked at the public library after school. My mother worked at the Woolworth store. At first 50% and then 60% of whatever I made went to the household.
When I was growing up, I got a job Friday afternoons at the local weekly newspaper, addressing and preparing the newspapers for distribution, after which we would band and load them into a station wagon and take them to the post office or the railroad station.
When I was growing up, my Saturday afternoons were spent cleaning the offices of our dentist. I made three dollars. Half of that went to my parents. The other half went to my dental bill. I didn’t have a problem with that.
When I was growing up, most of my clothes had been my older brothers. But style or ownership never crossed my mind. They were clean and (except for the occasional ironed on knee patch), very functional.
When I was growing up, I played on the kitchen floor with tin soldiers and ‘hot rods’ made from cardboard Necco Wafer candy boxes with tinker toy wheels.
When I was growing up, I learned what death was through both the loss of a puppy, and a friend that fell through the ice on the pond and drowned when he was about 8.
When I was growing up, my parents were my heroes. To disappoint them was to destroy myself. I never suffered the consequence of physical pain. My dad saying ‘do you know how disappointed I am in you’ sent me to tears.
When I was growing up, I didn’t have black friends, or white friends. I just had friends.
When I was growing up, I didn’t know we were poor. All the families around us didn’t have a lot either, so chickens, and eggs, and produce from gardens were shared.
When I was growing up, my dad drummed integrity into my head. He would say ‘you are only as good as your word or your handshake’. He was right.
When I was growing up, what you did defined you. What you said didn’t.
When I was growing up, my parents gave me all the values I needed. They are still valid today.
When I was growing up, I had a window on the world so unlike what I see today, or that which typifies reality to me.
When I was growing up, life was not complicated. You were who you were being brought up to be, and therein may be the problem with today.
When I was growing up, although I didn’t know it, I was being provided with everything I would need to survive and succeed, Everything I would need to be whomever I wanted to be.
When I was growing up, it turns out, I was the luckiest kid because I was allowed to become whatever I was capable of.
When I was growing up, I was given the opportunity to evolve into a man who took pride in himself, took responsibility for himself, and, if he became a victim, it was because he let it happen.
When I was growing up, I was provided with all the seeds necessary to grow my own garden.
oldmainer 