As
I mentioned when talking about racial integration, sometimes I would
accompany my father on his job when I was out of school. He was a
“meat salesman”. He wholesaled meat to country and small town
stores. At a lot of these country stores there would be a gray haired
old man, sometimes three or four, hanging around. I figured that they
were retired farmers and were there to socialize. One thing seemed
odd to me; they all wore long sleeve khaki shirts. As I stated
earlier, I would wear short pants in the summer. If I could get away
with it, I would not wear a shirt. Here were these old men wearing
medium weight long sleeve shirts and it was very hot.
Sometime
I would stay in the truck while father would go inside a store.
Having no air conditioning I would have the windows down with my arm
out the window. My elbow would be bent and my hand was back inside
the truck. I always made sure that my upper arm was touching the
truck so that my muscles would flatten and I hoped they would look
bigger. One day the truck was parked in an area behind and between
several stores. The streets were paved, but this area was not. It was
hot and dusty. I had my arm out and someone walked by and looked at
me. I thought they must have seen what looked like big muscles. Then
a whole new reality came to me. It seemed that I was alive to be
tested and everyone, including my mother and father, were observing
me, seeing how I was acting and reacting. That lasted a few moments
and then my rational mind took over. I was back in the reality I had
lived in so far in my life. When I wasn't distracted by other things,
I found I could go back into the mind frame of being tested. So I
played with that off and on that summer. Then I realized where the
idea of being watched had come from. At church I had been taught that
God put us here and if we were good we would go to heaven. If we
didn’t measure up then we went to hell. After that realization I
never went back into that reality. Today it is my understanding that
seeing things from that point of view is paranoia. I know nothing of
psychology so I am not sure. This took place while I was in my early
teens.
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