People were crazy just in a different way than now when I grew up in the 1950s. The Great Depression had really traumatized people and then World War II had made people even crazier. So, life was a lot more like "Survival of the fittest" and when children were tortured at home or beaten like they were a lot then, the brought this twistedness to school and tortured other children at school too.
And for one reason or another teachers didn't stop fights and people getting bloody like they do now. Maybe it's the liability laws changed or something but there was a lot of blood all the time growing up in Grade School and Junior High and in High School. By college most people who fought a lot had either joined the Army or other military branch or they had died somehow from their psychological or physical wounds.
So, seeing someone's teeth knocked out from a fist was not an unusual occurence in school for example. But, the other side of this is after a visit to the hospital (if they were lucky) they were okay with at most a concussion or lacerations or a broken arm or leg or head or jaw from fighting or just someone beating the hell out of them on the way home from school.
Both boys and girls were treated differently but in some ways what happened to girls was psychologically worse than what happened to boys. Boys mostly were physically injured more than anything else but girls tended to be less physically injured and more seriously psychologically injured.
So, as a boy if you could defend yourselves okay at least from people your own size usually you might be okay long term. But, this didn't mean that people older and bigger wouldn't harm you and put you in the hospital either.
I was always lucky in that I was never seriously beat up where I had to go to the hospital. Any injuries that serious I usually accidentally did that to myself taking risks like blowing up a 5 gallon Sparklett's Glass water bottle with water pressure and needing 10 stitches in my wrist or jumping off of roofs or spectacular crashes on my bicycle from 6 to 12 years of age. I remember one time I took my gym clothes home by stuffing them into my tennis shoes and then dangling the shoes off the front of my racing bike by the shoe laces. Only problem with this is one shoe got caught in the front spokes of my racing bike in Junior high and the bike flipped in heavy traffic. Luckily, when I hit the ground hands and face first over the handlebars no cars ran over me from the busy street. So, though I got injured some I was able to get up and pull my bike to the side of the road to regroup and not die by being run over.
What is the main lesson I learned in Grade school and Junior High about life?
I would say it was that: "Life was very cruel!" This was the main lesson I took from what I saw. I also learned that I liked to learn new things especially about science like Astronauts taking off and flying into space and I also liked reading Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov Science Fiction books then too.
These books always opened my mind up scientifically to new possibilities for my future and the future of the world.
I hoped for a world much less cruel and much less insane than the one I grew up in.
And to some degree I was able to create that kind of better world for myself and my children over time.
I couldn't save the whole world but I was able to spare my children some of the suffering that I had to experience over time with a lot of effort on my part and creativity and steadfastness and standing by my children no matter what happened in my life or any one else's.
By God's Grace
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