What I learned from being the youngest of five children

Probably the biggest lesson I learned is that people who want to boss you around need to have their heads out of their rears. I never minded getting an order from somebody who knew what they were talking about, at least in the situation - their tone was important and could effect whether I resisted or talked back or not, but if they were right about something needing to be done I did it.

Yes, I assumed the authority to judge whether the thing needed to be done or not. The criteria were:
Could they hurt me?
Could they get away with hurting me?
Would they get in trouble for hurting me?
Would the consequences of their being in trouble roll down to me?
Was the matter at hand objectively important?
How important?
For what?

Each of those deserves greater elaboration, but I have to do other things right now.

Oh! My! God!

It's pretty certain that I know victims of this pedophile. Or victims of his victims, at least. The two murderers I knew best were both Catholic boys. I knew one deaf boy who went to that school. His family left town. It seemed sudden to me, but we'd already parted as friends, so I wasn't paying attention.

No, I take that back. I don't know that he ever went there. I know for a fact he went to a different school. Whether or not there was any contact with the kids from Father Murphy's school I couldn't say.

But, since I heard about this, I've been thinking about who that I know might have been a victim of "serious" child abuse or molestation. I'm thinking of the sullen kids who became drug users and dropped out. One of the above murderes fit that bill perfectly. Another kid was just kind of boisterous in grade school turned quiet in Junior High and eventually went to prison for trashing the old school.

There were other kids. Kids who never liked me and I never liked them. In seventh and eighth grades they were the peckerheads who made junior high hell. Then they got into drugs and dropped out. I'm thinking the ones - the "burnouts" we called them - who lasted longer in school, weren't trying to bury traumatic memories.

I felt guilty in High School, I remember. Not about those kids and their problems, whatever they may have been. Back then, I was glad to have them out of my life. No, I felt guilty that I was smarter and stronger than almost everyone I knew, and I was guaranteed to go to Heaven. I didn't deserve any of that. There were people who worked out harder, studied harder and were tons better witnesses of the Love of Jesus than I was, but such were the facts.

Didn't take me long to blow all that shit up. Waiting to find out what Jesus had in mind for me to do with these gifts - and, particularly, what my idle hands found to do during that waiting - accounted for that.

And now... now that I know why those kids had those troubles, I feel guilty that I never reached out to them. I wasn't devoid of similar experiences. Some of us who'd experienced various kinds of abuse didn't use chemical drugs, we used Jesus instead. I'd say the evidence that I've seen, points to the theory that the severity, duration and type of abuse affect the outcome. I'm sure the professionals have beaten that dead horse to smithereens, but I'm just discovering the value of psychology myself.

Well, I gotta get the beanie ready for bed. (No school this week, so her mother and I aren't watching the clock.)

Update: You should go here to see what Stef has to say on this topic. You have the choice to watch his video, or read what he says in it. Or both. It's still a kick in the gut to hear my town spoken of in this context.