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I went outside behind the trailer and stretched out on the bunk I had set up for day sleeping. It felt so good to lie down. I relaxed in the warm shade, listening to the sounds of birds and distant cars. While I lay waiting for sleep I thought about being a man. At sixteen, my childhood was over, but I wasn’t a man yet either, but oh how I wanted to be grown up and be free to go my own way. I already proved that I could hold a real job. Now all I had to do was wait until I was a little older and I could strike out on my own. Too many moves and too many schools ruined my education. Every time we moved I fell further behind until I was held back two years. I knew I would never graduate. I’d have to be in school till I was twenty-years-old to do that. So school was just a place to socialize and wait. This isn’t how I wanted things to be.
I thought about my mother. She grew up on a Minnesota homestead where she was treated with the cruelty of a slave. She could have been bitter, but instead she was kind and compassionate. She wanted to protect me from the hardships of life. Her childhood had been robbed from her, so she did what she could to see that I had all of what she never did. Many times I heard her say, “You have only one childhood, you should enjoy it.”
Well, I did enjoy it.
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