I Was A Very Deprived Child

Or at least I thought I was.  After all I was the preachers’ daughter so I had to set an example for all the other kids.  I could not do the normal stuff that kids do.

For instance my parents are some of those people that watch and identify birds.  Do you have any idea how boring that is?!  Spending hours watching those feathered twittering things and having to be able to tell you parents the name of each bird by sight and sometimes just the song.  That is no way to treat a child.  But today give me a description and I can probably tell you what the bird is.

And when all the other kids were getting lunches at school that had sandwiches made with that wonderful store brought bread guess what I had—I had to eat sandwiches made from home made bread.  This was before bread machines mind you.  The next morning after the fresh bread we always had to have homemade cinnamon rolls.   They were never the store bought ones everyone else got.  Do you have any idea what one of those store bought ones tasted like after all the home made ones?

Of course summers were the worst because from the time I was 8 until I was 16 we would move out of our house the last day of school and up to the summer camp and move back into the house the day before school started.  Talk about torcher.  I had to spend the whole summer learning how to swim-not quite making it to Junior Life Guard, learning to water ski-even a dock start on one ski-riding the horses, learn how to paddle a canoe, play with the 5 deer that walked into camp one year and stayed the summer. 

I had it real rough because dad was the director and mom was the cook—a vegetarian one no less.  And boy did they run a tight ship.  You should have heard mom yell when I brought the deer into the kitchen, it was between camps and the deer was hungry so what was the problem?  But you know in all those years not one kid came to me complaining about either one of them.  The only complaint about moms’ cooking would be there was not enough.

One of the toughest years was when the Dashers, they helped dad, brought the baby bob cat, he was 10# at the beginning of the summer and the otter with them.  Do you know what it is like to by the end of the summer take a 40# bob cat for a walk?  Or play with an otter in the water?  I had to do horrible things as a child.  Do you know what that otter’s favorite dish was?  Cottage cheese and crawdads!!  Yummy!!!  The sound was memorable—crunchie crunchie.

Then there was the year my sister and I decided to see how many chipmunks we could get into a cage.  It was about 4’x3’x3’.  I think we had 30-40 and then some kid came and let them all out.  Boy was I pisted!   No real harm we were going to have to let them out anyway.  But do you know how much work that was?  Chipmunks are not that easy to catch with a string, stick and dishpan but we got to be experts.

You how most kids have cats and dogs for pets?  Well we always had cats and dogs.  But we also had guinea pigs, a monkey, chipmunks, birds, a horse and oh yes a weasel.  Not all at the same time though.  Again why do parents torcher children by making them put up with things like that?

Then there were the rules.  I could only spend half an hour a day on the phone.  This was before all the frills we have now.  I had to wait till I was 16 before I could officially have a boyfriend!  Going out with my friends there had better be a parent with us.  I had to go to church every week and prayer meeting every Wednesday night.  Church school instead of public.  And camping.  When we went camping it was in a tent.  I had to play with cars and trucks and build roads in the dirt and stick houses and play miniature golf on the course dad would always build for us—I think it was really for him and mom though.

And what ever you do DO NOT get me started on the horrible things I had to read!!!  For one thing I of course had to read the Bible.  But then there were the other books.  Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, Janette Oke, and last but not least there was a series of books written by a man by the name of Sam Campbell.  Not a lot of people have heard of him.

One final way I was tortured I was raised a vegetarian.  This was back in the day when every thing you would order in a restaurant had some form of meat.  So you can imagine what happened when we did go out to eat.  The poor waitress’ had to be nice to us but I know now that there probably many of them that wanted to add there own comments let alone what the cooks probably wanted to come say to us.  Alot of grilled cheese sandwiches.  How could we enjoy a meal without meat?  For us it was simple and easy because that is what we were used to.

Now here is where I got the last laugh on people.  When the ‘new’ fashion started to be be a vegetarian I could look at them and say ‘What took you so long?  I knew about that over 50 years ago.’  One note on the subject—not trying to convert any one but when I was a true veggie I did not have a weight problem.

You know what though I must be a horrible parent too.  Cause there are times when I hear my daughter talking to her friends she talks about the horrible things I’ve done to her {the one thing I did to her was watch the old movies.  Harvey, Abbot & Costello-if you want kids to roll on the floor put one of their movies in-Philadelphia Story and High Society, but you should have seen her the day she came home from a class in high school that the teacher ask about an old movie and she was the only one that knew anything about it.  She was so proud!  I smiled and gave my self a little pat on the back.}  I just smile because I know something she hasn’t realized:  You do turn into your parents don't you?  And I hope she in turn will mistreat her children just like I have mistreated her cause she is turning into her mother too.  She just doesn’t see it yet.

Just LookinAtItMyWay