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My grandfather died the year before I was born with no pension, so my father had to take over supporting his mother, sister, & 2 brothers. My mother died when I was 4 so we moved in with my grandmother and my father's siblings. He became an alcoholic and died when I was 29. There were 8 of us living in a 2 bedroom house. We never had a car, or money, or new clothes. We shared a bike between me and my 2 brothers (good luck with that). In high school, I actually had a girl say "You're from there??" and step back 2 steps in disgust.
I had a very good childhood. We never knew we were underprivileged; everyone in our neighbourhood was pretty much in the same economic situation. We had fun, played, did things I would NEVER let my kids do, and enjoyed our life as kids, with all the bumps, bruises and heartache.
What surprises me about this thread isn't the depth of emotional scarring that it reveals, but how many of the posters have managed to deal with it so successfully. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit that we can go through what some of you have gone through (mine really wasn't that bad), and still function as adults.
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The secret to great marksmanship is deciding what the target was AFTER you've shot.
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