Humble Beginnings

Good . I have been .

Let me tell you a bit about my background before getting into the religion I practice.

Looking back at my early life, I feel blessed. I complained on occasion but now I see how lucky I was. 

I grew up in Jamaica (I am now a naturalized US citizen) under the watchful eye of my parents but I felt more-or-less free to explore. My father was strict about me not leaving my prep school (kindergarten to middle school) with strangers no matter what they said and to wait until he picked me up. I wasn't allowed to move around on my own until I hit high school. I also wasn't allowed to visit anyone without first getting permission.

I must admit I broke that rule several times in my quest to make friends.  But I kept that to a minimum because breaking rules would inevitably be stressful on my backside. Usually, though, all it took to keep me in line, was for my father to raise his baritone a couple notches:

"P A T R I C I A!!!"

Thank God I had responsible parents. I shudder when I read current headlines about missing or molested children. It makes me similarly protective of my grand-daughter.

Anyway, I had a lot of backyard, lots of mango, plums and almond trees to climb and pick fruit from, colorful insects to examine and when those weren't enough, my imagination could take me anywhere I wanted to go.  I also read a lot and made friends with my neighbors.

My prep school was in the home of the school's headmistress who was a spinster. (So was my high school head-mistress. Hmm. What's up with that?). The headmistress of my prep school was a good but strict teacher. I grew up in the days when punishment was corporal. In my prep school, this consisted of a thin leather strap called the "nurse" for girls and a fatter leather strap called the "doctor" for boys. I felt the nurse's sting on a few occasions when I was "talking too much." LOL. But I would take the moderately applied "nurse" any day to the modern day torture with mind-altering ADHD, SAD, ABC and EFGHIJK drugs!

And please don't think I am promoting corporal punishment. I am not. I have a better system. My point is, the alphabetical soup of psychiatric drugs being applied prodigiously to our children is far more damaging to them than a slap on the behind, done with justification and explanation. And to further clarify, in my high school, punishment was by way of detentions and was not corporal.

The other fortunate basic of my upbringing was my education. My father took an active role in teaching me to read. That baritone again. At school I learned the alphabet, phonics and grammar. At home, my dad would drill me. 

"Here is an article I want you to read. Stand over there (a few feet away) and read aloud to me so I can hear you."

Boy, that was tough sometimes but that helped me to become a lifelong reader and a lover of the stage. Thank you, Dad. R.I.P.

This is all for now.

More later.