IF you could do a Word Cloud of your childhood...what would show up LARGE?

[hunter]

159. My childhood trauma was mostly confined to middle and high school.

I quit high school for college. College was much better. Adults, especially adults in college generally know they'll get in serious trouble if they assault a minor, especially a skinny squeaky hairless obnoxious one like myself. My middle and high school nickname among the bullies was "queerbait."

My childhood home, wherever it was, even sleeping in a public park in France, was a fairly safe place.

My siblings and I were somewhat feral children but there was always a safe place to sleep and something to eat, whatever the surrounding family chaos and extreme drama.

Kicked out of college I was living in my car in a church parking lot because the police would harass me on the streets and I really didn't want to go home for a couple of reasons. It was just more comfortable chilling out in my broken car. I still had a university library card, gym pass (for showers), and a computer account thanks to a some people who still saw some potential in me.

Anyways, I already had plenty of experience living rough.

In my family we create funny stories whenever someone dies. The nastier they were, like my crazy grandma who was a danger to herself and others, as recognized by the law, especially after the police and paramedics had to drag her out out of her house kicking, hitting, cussing, biting, and thank God she'd forgotten where her guns were hidden, well then, the funnier the stories we tell. If strangers don't understand why we are laughing, so what?

My grandma was living in an extended care facility and she must have weighed no more than eighty pounds. She could still be extremely nasty. Damn that woman had a mouth. She could castrate a human male with her words. She was a hoarder too. The place she was living didn't allow hoarding but they tolerated the 100 plus pounds of crap she'd tied up to her wheelchair in plastic shopping bags. Yes, she was a bag lady.

So I was pushing her along in a public park one day and she saw some pine cones on the path.

"Can you pick those up for me?" she asked, "they're just going to throw them away!"

I did, she wrapped them up in a plastic bags and hung them off her wheelchair. She was happy.

It made me feel good I could do that.

Simple things.

It's the simple stuff that matters and ignore all the crappy stuff if you can.

I've not been much successful at that, but here I am.