nakeddriver's Blog

As the previous three posts were about sexual activities, this one covers the other aspects of my life during these times.

I do not remember anything before I was three, though I saw a picture of me sitting on my grandfather’s lap, and he died before I was 1½ years old.
I was adopted from birth, and refer to my adoptive parents as just “parents”. I remember I was given eye patches to make my “lazy eye” work, and when they were removed, the other eye went “lazy” and never recovered!
My parents loved me more than anything, and they tried at least twice to adopt a sibling for me, but for unknown reasons the efforts failed. Then I had some problems and became more than enough to handle so the idea of a second adoption was dropped.
The interesting thing about this time was that I did not talk until I was four! My parents consulted with several child psychologists, who basically told them the same thing: that I would talk when i wanted to, not before—and once I started, I’d never stop!
I can remember three incidents from the “non-talking” time:
1. My mother drove to the shopping center (today we call them “strip malls”), and left me in the car (no one would think of doing that today!) with a bag of cheese snacks. The car was a Dodge® and had automatic transmission but the concept was still in “beta-testing” and they hadn’t thought of putting a “park” setting on it. Mother got out and I became aware that something was wrong: the “box” (which how I thought of a car: a box that was mobile) was moving! Since every other occasion which had found me in this situation had the “box” stationary once the person operating it left, I felt that something needed to be done—but what? I did the only thing I could think of to attract my mother’s attention as she was not that far away: banging on the window and screaming. She heard me and turned around, gasped, and ran back to intercept the car before it ran into anything. This time she remembered to put on the parking brake. Once she parked the second time, there was no more excitement and I went back to eating my cheese snacks.
2. Dad took me to the hardware store. He usually held onto me but this time let me go and off I went exploring, making my way to the sporting goods section. Now at this time, I had discovered the very pleasing action of flipping light switches or turning lamp knobs to create or extinguish light. Well, I found what looked to be a lamp in the hardware store and tried to turn it on by turning the knob. Much to my disappointment, nothing happened. I tried to turn it off by rotating the knob in the same direction but that didn’t seem to work either. Then I became aware of something being wrong, and—worse yet—extremely dangerous. Somehow I knew that, when this condition occurred, it was imperative to find an adult immediately without wasting time because it was so dangerous. So I took off looking for an adult and found one (not my dad) and started pulling on his pant cuff to get his attention. He looked down at me, who barely came up to his thighs, and I kept puling to get him to follow me. I was able to find the problem area and pointed at the offending object. He corrected the problem and I smiled in appreciation, then went off to find my dad. Now a question: What was it that I had found, and what had I done to cause the problem? (Answer at the end)
3. A tornado went through our city but not close to us. My parents drove to the area of town it had hit to view the damage. They noticed my expression of perplexity and explained it as a big windstorm.
Since my parents both worked, they hired a lady to be a maid and nanny. She was kind but knew how to handle children. One day she was preparing food and I rolled out in front of her and said, “[Name], you know I can’t talk?” which was the first sentence I ever uttered! The poor lady almost dropped the pan she was holding! When she recovered, she said, “What do you think you’re doing now?!”. Needless to say, my parents were overjoyed.
My parents sent me to preschool and I did poorly. They tried several different schools before finding one I liked. Once someone left a room door open (maybe at Bible school) and I took off through it. Eventually I was found (can’t remember where I’d gone but think that might have been the time I saw some school kids outside across the street at recess and went to play with them and when they went inside, I went with them and that was how they discovered me) and was told not to do that again. (Did I heed? Of course not!)
One of the things I enjoyed doing almost every day was walking around the neighborhood’s houses “inspecting” air conditioning units. One day, according to my parents, apparently a friendly dog came along and I followed it, ending up going somewhere outside my neighborhood and not sure how to get back. Eventually my parents found me.
Dad taught me to climb trees, and we had two in our back yard which I climbed with gusto, eventually learning to do so alone. Once I climbed a smaller tree and fell out with no damage except to my pride. (By the way, I still love climbing trees, but that will be put in a later edition.)
I had a propensity for throwing things on the roof of our house. Sometimes dad would have to go up there and retrieve them. Once, my dad had some large empty oil cans in the garage. They were open, and I stuck my fingers in one and tried to throw it on the roof. The opening cut my finger, and the can of course rolled back down and hit me on the forehead! Ouch!
I can remember some of our early vacation trips but not well enough to relate here. One of them went to a national park, I recall. Dad sometimes took mother and me along on business trips just so we weren’t cooped up in the house all the time. Of course, mother went along mostly to take care of me.
Overall, though, I had few other children to play with and thus became somewhat of a loner. It took a few years to overcome that.
We moved to Des Moines before I was six, so that was where I started public school. I was painfully withdrawn and it took a long time to bring me out of my shell.
I recall most of the vacation trips we made then. The first summer after moving, we visited Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. I think the following year saw us go to Chicago, the Wisconsin Dells, and Michigan to see my uncle. Denver was the year after that, our old home the next, and not sure of the one thereafter. One year dad took me to Minnesota to go canoeing in the Boundary Waters, The one after that, we did Glacier National Park and a camping workshop on the Flathead Indian reservation. Then back to old home the following summer, followed by a return to Minnesota. After my sophomore year in high school (when I learned how to drive), we took a tour of Europe. After my junior year, I did an exchange program in Germany, After I graduated, I went to college right away but took the summer between off, which distressed my parents as they wanted me to get a job.
It was during that summer that I revealed my sexual orientation to my parents. Dad had sent me to a psychologist and that person had asked me and I told him what I believed at the time. Dad went along for the next meeting, and we “cleared the air”. Dad was somewhat distressed but took it fairly well. We knew that mother would have to be told, which was done a short time later (mother claimed it was on her birthday, but I think it was before that). She pulled the old “I’ve failed” and “Where did I/we go wrong?”. This was before the days of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) or any organization of a similar nature, nor did much positive literature about the subject exist, so I was unable to give a source that would indicate that there was no “failure” on anyone’s part, it was simply the way things turned out. It became a “crisis of faith” for her, especially when it was obvious that I had no “one-and-only” friend. What bothered her the most, though, was that she was not going to have any grandchildren. This was an issue which would continue into the following decade (and the next blog).
Our spring break trips were mostly to Arkansas with friends to go fishing.
Now back to the timeline as I wanted to put the vacations together.
My dad taught me how to play checkers when I was probably seven, and chess the following year. Although I liked the game, I didn’t really have the necessary insight to grasp it. I picked it up again when I was twelve, and thereby began my love for the game.
My elementary school years were fairly good. I found I liked science the best and gym the worst. Math was okay but seemed tedious. I liked English but was a bad writer, though an excellent speller. Literature for the most part bored me.
My mother had me take lessons from a French tutor. I learned the basics of the language, but never had enough to be fluent in it. In addition, I took up the French horn, and while I did all right with that, found having to practice to be tedious to the point of trying to get out of it. I played in school orchestra until my sophomore year, during which I got braces which made the instrument impossible to play. I still have my old horn and should try to sell it.
Junior high (grades seven through nine) was both good and bad. More good than bad though, I would say. I liked it for the most part. I found that I liked math even more than science. As is true with most kids that age, puberty was a challenge, and coupled with my orientation, that made for some not-so-pleasant times.
Once I got into chess bigtime, that cut own on family trips a lot a I wasn’t home that often.
High school was a breeze. I really disliked history and literature, but fortunately had gym only once per week and chorus the other days. I was fairly popular for being intelligent as well as playing for the school chess team, and was fully accepted for being myself. Besides math, I found I had a knack for German, and ate that up.
So that brings you up through high school graduation.
Answer to hardware question: Somehow my parents had instilled in me that when I smelled natural gas escaping, this was very dangerous and required adult intervention immediately. As there was no “Scratch ’n’ Sniff™” then, I don’t know how they did this, but the “programming” was in place. The device I had encountered was a propane lantern with a cylinder attached, and naturally I didn’t realize that the way to turn it off was to rotate the knob in the opposite direction. When I smelled the propane, even though that is slightly different from natural gas, the programming kicked in. When I learned to talk, I told my dad about it.
Did you figure this out?
Further blogs will cover later years, and I will try to write one each for sexual and nonsexual things.
See you soon, and stay bare!