Thus, I offer this work as my own reality, as I saw it. These tea leaves get no more legible. For the most part, children are not heard anywhere, and it was no different where I grew up. In my community, power was thought to come straight from the Word of God, revealed to us through biblical scriptures. Although many people probably could not read much past sixth-grade level, they believed that every word in the Bible was true and were fond of proclaiming that, often and vehemently, to cut off any questioning or curiosity.
Transgendered people speak of having felt early on that they had been born into the wrong body.
Although I cannot identify with that statement in terms of sexual orientation or proclivity, it accurately describes my feelings about my early life. I grew up with. Early on, I was a bundle of curiosity, not fixed on any specific object but largely random and uncontrolled. In a world full of people who bent their shoulder to the wheel and accepted the hard life filled with the physical work and misery that God had given them, I was pretty close to worthless. As children, everyone took on the serious responsibilities of working in the fields, raising crops, and caring for the farm animals and the younger children.