why are you what you are?

Good advice, Cav! No history yet, but that sounds like good advice for general health too. I found the tinnitus basically went away once I had a more active and focussed lifestyle.

(Shoveling snow seems to raise my metabolism!)

I have that same problem, Cav, so i stopped using the closet--i just pile it up, and keep waiting for someone to do the laundry--i mean, why would i do laundry, when i can just buy more clothing?

I was the victim of abuse when very small, and no details will be forthcoming. My grandfather put an end to it as soon as he found out, but not before i had been assaulted, and my jaw dislocated. This was on the left side, so my left eardrum was perforated. Doctors have since opined that the bones of the middle ear were damaged as a result, and failed to grow properly thereafter. I am "legally deaf" in my left ear (conclusion of an Army doctor, who said i should never have been allowed to join--i laughed, reminding him that there was a war on), and, as a result of the dislocated jaw, suffered from ear infections for about the next ten years. This left substantial scarring. I didn't piece all of this together until about 25 years ago, when a dentist commented upon the jaw injury, and surmised that i had likely had the ear infections. As he was correct, it set me thinking, and i put together my memories, and bits and pieces of my medical record.

The result for me as a child was trouble in school. In the summer after my injury, as i approached my fourth birthday, my grandfather had taken the time to go through The Wind in the Willows with me, teaching me to read. Our house was always full of books, and good quality books, for child and adult. With my grandfather's help, i read many of the "grown-up" books, and developed my love of history, first simply as a story, which love i have cherished to the present.

When i got to school, and would be asked to read aloud, i stammered, and, in the words of Huw in How Green Was My Valley, i had "read more words than i'd ever heard spoken." Given my stammer and my pronunciation problems, i was placed in the "bluebirds"--the slow readers. It infuriated me. As a small boy, i vowed to myself that i would master the language, so that i would one day know it as well as or better than any teacher i ever encountered.

I was an introverted child, and my preference was to remain in the background, to observe, and to participate quietly. But my hearing difficulties would not allow that. I was loud, and did not know it. I soon became "the class clown." School work bored me, i often completed the homework in the idle times when the other children were laboring over their classroom assignments, which i finished quickly. Because i despised the school environment, and the teachers, and because in was such a loud child, without knowing it, my comments and jokes soon singled me out for the teachers as a troublemaker.

I survived all of this, but my interest in formal education waned as the years went by. I got so much from books, and so little from school, that i eventually gave up on formal education altogether. Although i had done sufficient work to be within a year or a year and a half of a bachelor's degree, i simply had no interest in returning to school, after i got out of the Army. This has perhaps affected me financially--but i really don't feel it. I live comfortably, and although i'm by no definition wealthy, i have insurance policies and retirement accounts which assure that i won't burden anyone by my death, and may live a shabbily comfortable life in old age. My father wanted me to become a lawyer, as he is, and he offered to give me "a free ride" for it (although i suspect he would not have kept up his end of the bargain); but i was interested in history for its own sake, and not as a path to law school. When the subject comes up, i joke that the world should be grateful that i did not become a lawyer.

All of those early childhood events were linked, on to the other, and have produced what i am as a man. I'm ambivalent on the idea of placing a judgment of value on the experience. I am what i am, and that attitude has been with me as far back as my memory stretches, which it to the time shortly after my injury. I am content, and, if not happy all the time, i suspect that no one else is, and have no regrets.

Thanks Boss!

From my school experiences, Setanta, I think my kids will be home schooled. I was always a precocious **** in school, and even when I was a baby. However, I was perfectly content when just left alone. School was a complete bore, and I resorted to 'class clown' as well. Spent a whole lot of time in the office. Back then, brown bag lunches were still the norm. One day, on the way to the bus, I found a dead mouse. I put my lunch in my knapsack and popped the dead mouse into my lunchbag. When the kids asked me "What do you have for lunch?" I said "Take a look..." Teacher went to the principal and forced me to go see a child psychologist. I just thought it was a laugh...anyway, to this day, I still forge a unique path for myself, despite hardships. No more dead mouse lunchbags, but the determination to do things my own way still prevails, for better or worse. It seems like a path that continues to grow...I have learned to read people, be more sensitive, and chomp down on an idea or relationship like a pit bull when I feel it is right. I love to laugh, and have always had a quirky sense of humour, which I do use to diffuse tense situations. However, if I had to pick a word to sum up the things I have learned from my experience it would definitely be 'tenacity'.

I am very impressed by the ability of people to hone in on and tell of core events with such individual style and verve. Hope to explain myself some too, but not this minute. I appreciate hearing everybody's self knowledge.

I was never precocious, and never did a whole lot of reading. Wore glasses from when I was a young kid, so other kids used to pick on me. I learned early on that you had to defend yourself by fighting; and comments on my report card included "c.i. fights too much." My older brother got gold stars and the American flag on his. Not smart, and got into fights at school, but I think I was a pretty good kid. I didn't smoke and drink like my peers. I remember those brown bag lunches. I used to make peanut butter and jam. I had hardships too, but I won't spell them out here. I barely graduated high school, but by some miracle got a degree in accounting after my four year stint in the US Air Force. Had a pretty decent, rather short, professional life, and worked primarily in management positions. Retired at 63. Didn't do too badly, considering. c.i.

Poor? These fellows were poor.

The Four Yorkshiremen
Hear the wav here

http://www.hellas89.new.labour.org.uk/page8.htm

Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. "Farewell to Thee" being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.

Michael Palin: Ahh...Very passable, this, very passable.

Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?

Terry Gilliam: You're right there Obediah.

Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope...

kuvasz, Perfect! Loved every word. I'm TG. c.i.