Being a Child Was Not Good

When I was a child I had rotten eyesight (as now) but I didn't have glasses until I was er... I don't know, ten? Eleven? I was constantly in trouble at school for peering too closely at the page, and I couldn't see the blackboard. It's funny I've never really thought about this before. I was always in trouble for writing in too cramped a hand in Penmanship, but I distinctly remember trying to comply and then one word taking up an entire line, which I lost point for (angry red marks). I couldn't see a damnedthing. It didn't hold me back from reading like a fiend and spending most of my time on the back of a horse miles from home, but it gives me pause now.

My parents regarded school as exclusively my business, in fact they wouldn't write me notes when I had off for being ill. I had to forge them just because they never could be bothered. Children in those days had not achieved the lofty pinnacle of importance they hold these days, for good or ill. Somewhere a bit ahead of the dogs, but with far greater responsibility and subject to seering verbal lashings for every mistake, children in those days were no one's focus, least of all that of adults (which was better all around), but were expected to be useful. If told to do something we were expected to turn, mutely, and go and do it, and I still do that sometimes.

Once after we moved to this country I was issued a penpal. Mine was an address on a sliver of yellow paper (that's how I remember it, anyway) and the street was something-Lindenbaum. I remember it as Spaanse-Lindenbaum but that's undoubtedly wrong but it was something like that. I believe I either never wrote or conversely received no reply, the former being likely as where would I have got stamps?

Labels: Raised by Wolves