Physical Locations
I was born in Marion, Indiana and remember very early on living in Junction City, Kansas where my father was stationed at Fort Riley. I remember our drive to Fairmount, Indiana where my paternal grandparents spent most of their lives. We shortly moved to Silver Lake where I would spend the rest of my life, except for summers in my teen years in Fairmount with my grandparents.
Relatives
I was obviously born to my father and mother, but after they split when I was about 4, my father and mother remarried other people, so I have one full brother and 3 half brothers, all younger than me. I think we had a fairly common childhood full of shenanigans.
Education, learning, school, and miscellaneous
from what I’m told, I learned how to read around 4 years of age. I remember going to kindergarten in Junction City and seeing my name with an arrow pointing to which class i was supposed to go to. I loved to read as a child and would read anything I could get my hands on, including packaging (ingredient labels). I loved going to school because there seemed to be an infinite number of books, and would have been content spending the entire day in the libraries. I was not so fond of the social structure of school. though everyone was of a fairly poor class of people, there always seemed to be this vying to be “top dog” in which I didn’t care to participate. this non-participation made me the subject of bullying, and when I would out-reason or out-logic the bully, it would mean a physical beating. I was also considered very shy and pretty soft spoken, so i just didn’t fit in with this particular social structure.
I went to middle and high school in Warsaw, which was the “big city” to me, even though I had experienced Wrigley Field in Chicago. the schools had lots of books, newspapers, and magazines so I was able to delve into other worlds and ideas, and into myself. in these schools I encountered other classes of people and I felt social interactions, that is the groups and competition between the groups, to be absolutely disgusting. I got along with pretty much everyone but had only a couple of very good friends. it was also the first time I had encountered people with different tones of skins and different cultural backgrounds. it was with these friends that I found out that my family was racist and my father tried to ban me from being friends with “those people”.
Religion
I basically grew up in a Wesleyan church. everything was focused on the church. it didn’t really make much sense to me, there were lots of contradictions and hypocrisies. my questions and exposure of the contradictions tended to cause lots of strife, so I learned to keep them to myself. by 15 I had the King James version of the New Testament memorized, and could easily point out contradictions, though it was still taboo to do so, blasphemy or something. at 16 years old I got a hold of a Koran and read through it. I came to a conclusion that none of this made sense, bringing me to realize that I’m atheist, and still atheist to this day.
Gene's Community Ramblings 