Writing

I'm often surprised at what I write at the heading I call "Writing". Originally, I used this heading to try to help people interested in writing better who might just be starting out a blog themselves or something like this.

For example, I started my first blog in June of 1999 at Geocities.com then before Yahoo bought it then. I kept this site at geocities.com until 2007 when I bought a site for my archival purposes of most everything I have written that was longer since 1980 when I was 32 years old.

I have been very lucky in life that I never had to get paid for writing. Writing started out as a way of doodling in my spiral notebook to try to make sense of my older cousins death who was 16 when I was 8. I lived in Glendale California and attended Horace Mann Grade school then in 1956 when my cousin was joyriding and 16 years old and took a wrong turn and drove into a house, with friends and broke his neck and when he turned to his friends to make sure they were okay his neck being broken killed him. So "Are you guys okay?" was the last moment of his life then at 16.

At age 8 being an only child being raised by my mother and father and mother's mother who lived with us in Glendale in a rented house then I felt very vulnerable and scared. 

So, writing and doodling in my school spiral notebook helped me cope with my loneliness. I didn't know this cousin "Bobby" name after his father like I was named after mine well because after all I was 8 and he 16. However, I felt if my cousin could die then so could I. Also, I had almost died of whooping cough at age 2 around 1950 and 1951 myself. So, death was always near to me and looking over my shoulder. 

Also, in 1956 people died more at any age at all. People died as babies or children or young adults or adults in all sorts of incomprehensible ways then. 

So, needless to say death was always with us very closely all the time especially in the 1950s when so many World War II veterans (likely thousands to millions) self destructed a lot between 1940 and 1965. But by 1970 most of them that couldn't cope anymore were dead already from one cause or another.

So, death was omnipresent in the lives of all World War II veterans and there were millions of them then not just in the U.S. but throughout the known world.

So, suicides from veterans were about 10 to 100 times worse than any war ever since including the Viet Nam War and the Korean War back then.

Ex-soldiers offed themselves and their families all the time in the 1950s and 1960s and 1940s. It was just the times we lived in then worldwide.  

So, as a child of the 1950s you needed to be aware who the veterans were so you could run so they wouldn't beat you to death as a child. Because any and all children could easily be beaten to death by strangers on any given day then.

This is just what we all dealt with as children growing up in the 1950s then.

I was one of the lucky ones who survived all this.

This was one of many reasons why going into the military didn't interest me because I didn't want to get battle fatigue and kill children like so many did then. Battle Fatigue was what they called this before they called it PTSD.

Another name for this is "The Walking Wounded!"