I know there were some who seemed to have lived a charmed life. My biggest tormentor was the richest kid in middle school. His life did not end well in his 20's and now I feel empathy for that kid and most others that made my life miserable sometimes.

What you shared stirred up some emotions within my soul I had forgotten about. I thought about it and my life was great until the sixth grade. That's when AI discovered that other kids were fkn horrible.

I pondered what you said and asked. Here is the best thing I can come up with.....

The Greatest Generation (TGG), our grandparents, traditionally speaking, raised our parents, Boomers, in the kept together nuclear family, stay at home mom. TGG went through world war and not having much, wanted to give their kids everything.

Systemically speaking, the Boomers landed on the timeline of probably the Golden age of America. When they finished highschool they could go to work for a company without a college degree, make a good living wage, and retire with a real pension.

Now before deep diving into GenX, think about this. I remember seeing a documentary on YouTube about this tribe of people in which they added these rings around their necks to stretch their necks like a giraffe, by continuing to add more rings over the years.

I thought, that's obviously stupid and unnecessary and probably a bad idea. Why do they do that? But to them, that seemed normal. A product of their environment.

I look at the generations after us and I realize that the Internet and social media did not improve the world, it made it worse. I'm not here to debate that, it's just my take. I accept I could be wrong about any of this. Nonetheless.....

I finished 5th grade Spring 1981. August 1981, MTV came out. Now we all have very affectionate memories of MTV back then, but I wonder if that was a turning point for our generation. I see that as our version of social media and that which had a powerful impact on our world view. This is normal to us. The giraffe people might beg to differ about MTV. The irony.

The point. If you're raised in the sewer, the sewer seems normal. And then you become protective of and connected to, the sewer.

Our parents became the generation of divorce and two income households. America was still "safe" back then, systemically speaking. We were safe from the traditional violence of today but we were left alone. Parental involvement in school dwindled. We were raised by other kids, teachers, and MTV in a world that was transforming us into a consumer nation.

Sixth grade was a game changer in 1982. The kids got meaner, as they all do in the sixth grade. But this was different and we didn't know it was different because it was normal. The world had changed.

Yes, home life and upbringing matter.

Fortunately, for me, a young man with a very high tolerance for risk, living life like a wild man, eventually that which I did not appreciate in church, would be what ended up saving me from myself.

I went from drug addict crackhead, to supernatural deliverance and forgiveness, from unemployable to an engineer with a hot younger wife and great kids. To this day, and this is wrong on my part, the popular middle school chick who hurt me the most, was "Karen". Not because she turned me down, but because she ridiculed me about the clothes I was wearing to the point, one of the other girls said, "let's leave him alone, he can help it."

And that was the fkn worst. Being felt sorry for. There was a lot more behind that but I'm trying to leave myself out as much as possible while still making it relatable. If that's even possible.

For me, God used that childhood experience to mold me into the parent I needed to be for my kids and husband to my wife. We both hate divorce because we both went through it as children. And homeschooling our children was our only choice. Because, and this is not cliche, but I would end up in prison if my kids were in public school.

I found peace. I learned to love myself, which sounds lame. It's hard to love other people when you hate yourself.