I’m 42 now, and have had plenty of time to catch up from those awkward years.
My vision has gradually drifted even worse, to somewhere around 20/500, but at least prescription glasses (or occasionally contact lenses) correct my vision pretty damn close to 20/20.
I have no reason to lie, the school treated me like shit because I was an awkward kid, they thought I did it on purpose.
They also treated me like shit for failing their eye exam at age 7, which turned out to be the entire reason I was so awkward.
You know that big E on the top of the chart? Yeah, when they asked me to read the vision chart, I literally asked them “What chart, where?”
Rather than treat the situation seriously and inform my parents I was effectively blind and needed to get glasses ASAP, they accused me of ‘acting out’ because according to them I refused to read the chart.
Like fucking hell, I couldn’t even see the damn chart!
Yes, having 20/400 vision absolutely sucks!
Yes, that’s no lie.
I actually had to look that word up, never heard that term before.
To answer, well it’s both yes and no. You could definitely classify my childhood life and living situation as an ‘insular community’ of sorts, but not for the sort of reasons that might come to mind.
I grew up in the middle of a 40 acre horse ranch, along with a rather late diagnosis at age 8 of being extremely nearsighted. Without glasses, I can’t see my own fingerprints past about 5 inches in front of my face, and I couldn’t see a pile of horse shit until I found myself standing in it, no joke.
So yeah, even if they had 20 naked women dance around me, all I would have seen would have been blurs with splotches of pubic hair and some having a bigger chest than others.
Sigh, the ignorance of my childhood blind era, plus the awkwardness of the following years starting to catch up, were definitely the most awkward years of my life.
Nope. Child neglect, they neglected to teach me such things. Parents, school, friends, neighbors, all neglected to explain anything to me.
Hell, they didn’t even teach me that girls had different parts. I almost got expelled from school at age 7 because I walked into the wrong restroom. The school treated me like I was a pervert, when actually I was completely ignorant and innocent.
Yes, I read that part.
Years later I had a good talk with my parents to respectfully ask them why they never explained those things to me.
Their answer? They were waiting for me to ask them where babies came from.
By age 10, I had never even seen a baby before, so the question never crossed my mind.
I didn’t combine two things. One thing led to the other.
I heard mom moaning, so I was concerned. So that’s how I reacted, to go check on her. For lack of knowledge, what I saw led me to believe she was getting beaten.
The only reason I didn’t go back in with a bat was because my dad was naked, which utterly confused me since I also thought it was abuse.
I’m 42 now and have long since learned the facts of life and all. But what I’ve also learned is that you can never assume that anyone out there got a ‘decent’ sex education when they were young, if any education whatsoever.
Read my other comment.
I heard my parents going at it and thought my dad was beating my mom. He almost got a baseball bat to his head.
Yeah, when you don’t know what they’re actually doing, hearing them have sex can sound like dad beating mom, and I almost went to defend my mom.
For an ignorant child, hearing that activity can indeed be traumatic enough to make a kid want to defend their mom…
I dunno about that.
I’m an only child. By age 10, nobody had ever explained that activity to me, so I had no idea what sex even was.
I had no brothers or sisters to explain it to me, and since I had also never seen a baby before, it never crossed my mind to ask where they came from.
I accidentally walked in on my parents going at it one night. The room was dark, all I could barely see was my dad’s naked butt moving around, and I heard my mom moaning.
Keep in mind, like I said, I didn’t know what sex even was yet. I assumed my dad was beating my mom. I had no idea that what they were doing was actually an act of pleasure.
I almost went to the living room to grab the baseball bat to go protect my mom. Instead I just went back to my room and slammed the door as hard as I could.
So, yeah, wanna talk about what’s more traumatic? At age 10, I almost went to get a baseball bat to beat my dad’s head in, because I thought he was beating my mom.
It really does help to understand what’s going on, like what the hell do you really expect a dumb kid to think when they hear mom moaning and see dad thrusting?
Oh, I definitely knew when I had bad breath. For many years I would regularly get tonsil stones, and those things stink!
For whatever reason, thankfully I stopped getting those around 10 years ago. GOOD!!!
Interesting. Very valid reference link.
Thank you for sharing 👍
God is not spelled with a J. I was mostly referring to Jesus.
I found a much less clear background/etymology of the letter G.
This has got to be the absolute best response/answer to my question so far to date. 👍
I wish I could upvote this more than once actually.
Did the man ever sign a document, even so much as a clay tablet? So many translations, how would he have written his own name?
No no, more like if people really believe in the old literature, shouldn’t they actually study Hebrew, Latin, Greek, etc, and actually spell their mystical savior’s name properly?
I’m not into believing in invisible people or people that are supposedly meant to rise from the dead.
Hell, I never even had an imaginary friend.
Also, that doesn’t quite answer how the other words I listed were actually spelled or pronounced prior to the year 1524.
It all seems a bit sus to me, as if someone in 1524 injected a letter into the alphabet just for the sake of altering the historical narrative and making it harder for future generations to learn the truth, however it was written.
Okay. Why don’t people spell it right then?
So much supposed respect for a dude that died around 2000 years ago, you’d figure he would deserve the respect to at least spell his name right…
Thus far, I do not think I’ve seen the letter J anywhere in this post so far.
The letter J was invented in the year 1524.
Which means Jesus, Jews, Jerusalem, Jehovah, Justice, Justify, Julius, January, June, and July were all invented either in or after the year 1524.
Until someone tells me how to research those terms before the invention of the letter J, I choose to believe Jesus never existed and was made up in the year 1524.
Edit: While folks are busy downvoting (haha, carry on if you want), nobody has answered my question. How do I research names and words that start with a letter which didn’t exist during the time?
I just write on my rolling papers…
I was extremely nearsighted, I couldn’t even (and still can’t) see my own fingerprints past like 5 or 6 inches in front of my face before I got glasses.
So that made me the sort of kid that had to sit like 2 feet right in front of the TV to see anything more than a blur. Back then the televisions were cathode ray tubes, known to emit some radiation, so I wasn’t allowed to sit close to the TV.
So, I basically never even got to properly see a television show or movie until age 8 when I finally got prescription glasses, which was about the year 1990.
After finally getting glasses, I was just simply amazed that I could see the leaves on trees and other details. Hell, I barely even knew what my parents looked like before age 8, I only knew how to identity them by the sounds of their voices and their shoes and keys.
The next 3 years or so, I found myself heavily interested in math and science, and learned quite a bit. But I still had never seen a baby up until late age 10 or early age 11, so still it never crossed my mind to ask.
Honestly I don’t think I ever asked where anything came from as a kid. It was all a blur, things just existed, I never wondered where those blurs came from, they were just there.
Edit: After getting glasses, I absolutely knew my visual experiences and education were well behind, I knew there was a lot I needed to see and learn before catching up. But I didn’t know what things I had missed to even be curious and ask about yet.