Brother Bob’s 50 Year Apocalyptic Plan
OR How constant exposure to doom-and-gloom can affect your child. For my first blog entry, I decided to write about my own personal experience with the effects of overexposure to doom-and-gloom, something that is quite relevant in today’s high-tech-social-media driven culture. I found it very cathartic and enlightening. I hope it can do the same for you. My Childhood Background. I was born in 1964. Not quite in the Baby Boomer (Hippie) Era, but not quite Generation X either. I identify as a hippie; a tie-dye wearing, tree-hugging, meditating adult who leans more to the Liberal Left… Until I moved out to the Pacific Northwest and met the “Portlandians”. Gracious. Maybe I am more Conservative than I thought. My California Youth… I spent my formative years in Southern California, from ages five to fifteen. My college educated parents sold real estate and did well. We traveled a lot when I was growing up; mostly in the US, but a little in Mexico and Canada. Dad loved to charter boats and fish so we fished in the deep sea, we hiked and we camped. I did musical performances in summer school, and participated in plays in Junior High and High school. I was moderately active in the Girl Scouts. Your “typical” middle class childhood. Being a Farm Girl… This changed when my parents decided to reconnect with their Hoosier past. Mother Earth magazines, the Foxfire series… They bought a wheat mill, I made bread from scratch. When the time came, they bought 120 acres of land in the Midwest. Understandably, I went through a culture shock. I went from riding on my 10 speed bike through the lovely rolling hills of Southern California, shopping at South Coast Plaza, eating escargot with my parents when they couldn’t get a babysitter for business dinners… To riding in a small school bus that would pick me up at our trailer which was THREE MILES off a paved road, TWENTY MILES from the nearest town. The other kids on the bus were tobacco chewing, gun toting, chocolate gravy eating individuals that I had issue connecting with. Hmmm… I wonder why? I solved that dilemma by riding to town with my mother. She worked at the local bank and we would arrive two hours before school started. I would then sit outside the high school until the doors opened. Reverse that process to get home. Yeah, culture shock. Psst… Chocolate gravy is a real thing in the (south) Midwest. Look it up. My first year there, in the Midwest, was as a Sophomore. I joined the track team, like I had done in California. I was given the nickname “California” by the highschool track coach and team. It didn’t stick, but I can still claim it. I did make friends, avoided theater due to the teacher involved, and made it to the Honor Roll Society due to my grades. Visiting Girl… My Junior year there, my travel passion kicked in so we hosted a girl from Central America. She was SUCH a good sport, living with us in our small trailer. My Hoosier parents were going ALL OUT so we were raising chickens and pigs, cutting wood, burning wood piles, making rock walls, butchering the chickens and pigs, and gardening. As I write this, it dawned on me that the wood cutting and rock wall building sounded like a work gang scene from some period piece about prison life: cut to Shawshank Redemption. But, no, this is typical farm life. Our water was pumped from a windmill, we were on a party line, going to town was a major ordeal, and we bathed in bowls when the water table dropped below the windmill’s reach. I repeat, she was SUCH a good sport! Traveling Girl… My senior year, I went to the United Kingdom as an exchange student. I both loved and hated it. My first host family had some more-severe-than-normal familial issues, so I switched families halfway through the year. But being a mild Anglophile, living there was fabulous; especially when I could travel around and see such iconic places as The Giants Causeway, Westminster Abbey and the Roman Baths. The educational system there was TOTALLY different than in the United States. I was the right age for their 6th Form level, but their curriculum was more extensive than ours, so I took 6th Form English and 5th Form Math and Science. I sat the ONE exam you take at the end of FOUR or SIX years of schooling. I passed all of my subjects. Yay! Please note, I was in the UK for the 1981-82 school year, when the sixth form college was set up for a four-year test, ordinary O levels, and six-year test, advanced A levels. At this point in my story I have given you a good, generalized idea of my young child-to-teen years and the rather broad experiences I had during those years. This is to establish my “normalcy”, although what IS normal? So what I have established is my Caucasian, middle class, social “normalcy”. Better. Butt… The rather large elephant in the “room” is still missing: you are probably wondering where the title comes from. “Where is Brother Bob?” Where indeed? My Brother Bob… My Brother Bob was born in 1957, so not quite seven years my senior, month-wise. This age gap did not lend itself to cordial relations between us. I was the typical “obnoxious little sister” and he was the typical “bully of an older brother”. According to him, I was spoiled. I don’t think so, of course, but what else would an older sibling think? To me, he was the cool-older-brother-who-had-neat-things that I wanted to both emulate and avoid… He could be a little abusive, in the typical I’m-Bigger-and-Older way: but the personal details are not for this story. I am simply trying to establish a little familial history. I am now onto the actual “meat” of this story, what I see as the actual purpose
