We'll have to agree to disagree Klugmo.
My childhood was no joyride either. I grew up traveling on the road in my mother's band, separated from my family for over 6 years. The only stable thing in my life was writing to my grandmother on a regular basis, and getting mail back from her, when we played a place more than a few months at a time. Usually we played a few weeks to a month and moved on to the next town. I will never know what it is like to have childhood friends... I was an only child, so my cousins were like my brothers and sisters, and they were all stolen from me for 6 years. I was sexually abused a number of times before my step father came along, because I was a beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed boy, that adults and older kids seemed to love taking advantage of, along with threats that they would kill me if I ever told anyone. When my step father came along, I was never sexually abused again, but instead, he beat me black and blue pretty regularly. One time hitting me in the face so hard that it snapped my braces and several pieces of metal protruded through my lips and couldn't be fed back through. He left me like that for awhile, before deciding to take me to the dentist, to have them cut out. He bragged that to the dentist that he had taught me a really good lesson, and corrected my "attitude" through his necessary violence. He beat me so badly one day, that my entire face and neck, parts of my chest and back, were ALL black and blue.
But even though all those things happened to me, I never molested anyone. I never beat my step children. I never tried to separate them from their own family.
Being a child growing up in nightclubs, I had women throwing themselves at me constantly. 20 something, and 30 something year old women were always trying to get me in bed, even at 13 and 14 years old. I made out with a bunch of them, but I never had sex until I was 18. I had been taught it was wrong to have sex before marriage, and I bought into that belief system, though I had MULTITUDES of opportunities to break that committment.
Before that step father, when I was 10 or 11, my mother drove me down to Ft. Lauderdale, where I had never been in my life, to drop me off at my FIRST step-father's apartment... they were separated at the time, but he had agreed to watch me for the school year, so she could take a job in Louisville, KY. Only problem was, that she didn't want to see him when she dropped me off, so she just pointed out his apartment door to me, and told me to go knock on it... and then she drove off, before I got to his door.
My mother had left me with several other relatives for long periods of time... 6 months... 8 months... before all this, and I just got terrified, and decided that she was probably lying to me, and just getting rid of me for good this time!
I ran down the highway after her, running in the middle of the road, but she never saw me. I turned around in time, to see a semi-tractor trailer rig, slamming on his brakes, and stopping within feet of running over me. I ran around to the passenger door, and jumped in his rig, and told him that my mother had abandoned me, and asked if he could catch her... I showed him her car, by now a half mile down the road. He tried but couldn't catch her, and at some point, he realized that it looked pretty messed up, that he was a black truck driver, with a little white boy in his truck. He took me to a pollice station and told me to go tell them everything I had told him, and that they would find my mother or my step-father for me.
I did what he said.
When they interviewed me, they started asking what color the driver of the truck was. Even at 11 I knew this was not a normal question, when the truck driver had been the good guy! I told them he was white.
Later on they did find my step father, who picked me up from the police station, with a belly full of the donuts the cops had given me (yes it's true... cops love donuts!)
Needless to say, that was a pretty traumatic experience. That driver could have easily been a murderer, who killed me and left on the side of the road somewhere.
There are plenty of other things that have been done to me throughout my life. But I NEVER cheated on my marriages, and I have lived life as an honest person, and tried to help others whenever I could. Enough bad has happened to me, that I could have been an evil person, wanting to take vengeance on the world. But my life will NEVER be an "excuse" for bad behavior. Once I am 18, it is MY CHOICE what I make out of my life... no one else's!
And however bad I had it, there are countless children in third world nations, being crippled in their hands, under forced labor, using their small hands to weave area rugs, for 16 hours a day, every day of their lives. There are others who are forced into slavery, forced into prostitution.... you name it.
Don't think for one moment, that ALL those people, choose to do evil, just because evil was done to them. People fored to endure brutal and horrible torture or other terrible circumstances have risen above their fates, and made something out of themselves... become succeful, become people of character and value.
Tiger's over-disciplined father and his attending of good colleges and then becoming a pro-golfer.... SERIOUSLY DUDE.... DO NOT EVER compare that, with REAL SUFFERING that many children... including myself, have endured!
I would have CHERISHED having an overbearing "father", but mine was not a part of my life, once my mother took me on the road, and when I finally was able to look for him myself, when I turned 18 and left the road, and we reconnected by phone... We talked about visiting each other in the coming weeks... but sadly, that was not to be...
He was murdered, only days after I found him again.
You think Tiger's life was any more difficult than mine?
AGAIN... STOP
EXCUSING BAD AND IRRESPONSIBLE BEHAVIOR!
We
CAN choose our own path, no matter what we started with!
