Reflections 2

I experienced those days of fear as torturous.  In its most intense times, I would be asking God to forgive me of my sins many times a minute.  I can't imagine the fear of a child being separated from his or her parents in a concentration camp.  I can't imagine the fear of a child being abducted. But my fear was real to me, despite the fact that I can look back and realize it was not real outside myself.

My youngest daughter Sophie experienced some fear in the first grade.  It was nothing like my fears as a child but it reminded me of it.  She came home from school a few times afraid of the fact that her teacher at some point would yell at the class because of the problem students.  Perhaps there were other elements to her fear then, but it led me to think there was probably something genetic involved that traced to me as well.

I think my fears in part stemmed from a sense of inadequacy I had.  In part, that sense of inadequacy stemmed from being an idealist, having perfection as the standard.  But I also was bad at attaining my own standards.  I am moving a little beyond the sixth grade, I know, as I analyze.

I was never diagnosed as hyperactive, although one "identity-sharing" story we tell is when an elderly woman at a concert turned around from the pew in front of us and asked my mother if I had ever been checked.  They didn't diagnose with "attention deficit" back then, but I certainly did have trouble in college and seminary focusing on reading.  I'll return to that later.

In any case, I often had overly optimistic goals coupled with an inability to follow through with things I started.  So I wanted to build a plane as a child.  I think I wanted to be able to fly my Grandma Shepherd back and forth from Indiana. She stayed with us for a short time in the 70's before moving back to Indiana and dying in a nursing home in 1979.  She was in a wheelchair by then.

I would not listen to the reason of my parents but stubbornly insisted on starting to nail planks of wood together.  They often appeased my unrealistic ambitions.  I was not one to listen to reason but was more emotionally driven.  I was quite stubbornly persistent about such things.  I could build an airplane and no one was going to tell me differently.

My parents of course were always right, but they usually let me find out for myself. They knew little to nothing about electronics or engineering.  I was probably above average in intelligence but not smart enough to figure out such things on my own.  At one point my father agreed to buy one volume a month of a new Funk and Wagnall's Encyclopedia for me.  It was a deal going at the Grand Union grocery store down the street in Wilton Manors, Florida. We had an older set, but I wanted an updated one.

I did use those volumes and still have them today.  Encyclopedias were the Google of the day. They were one of my only sources of information on the kinds of scientific things I was interested in.

At various times they agreed to subscriptions to Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, then later Popular Electronics.  One Christmas, maybe my senior year of high school, the family went together to buy me the parts to build a hexidecimal computer.  Of course it wouldn't have done any thing but display digits.  I'm sure that all seemed like so much play and craziness, but they appeased me.

One month I saw an add in the back of Popular Science, I think it was, for an opportunity to raise and sell fishing worms. It was of course ridiculous.  Where would I have sold them?  I'm not even sure they use worms much to fish in Florida.  It's more shrimp and squid.

But my dad went so far as to buy a tub to put the worms in.  I think I even tore up some newspaper in preparation.  But thankfully for him,  was soon on to something else.  We never bought a single worm...