Regular Kids and Then Some

Do you think most families believe themselves entirely ordinary most of the time? I know we did - the entire neighborhood of us. I know I did within my family. Of course, I was four. I had no perspective regarding what 'normal' looked like or was. I just assumed that I was it. There is a line in literature taken from a book titled, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing that says it best. It reads:
"It is ever the lot of children to accept their circumstances as universal, and their particularities as general.”
That's one of the best sentences I know of. And it's so true.

From the perspective of my forties, I can see how flawed and blissfully ignorant my viewpoint was. As well, I am fully aware of how delicate yet opaque the protection of this viewpoint is; not only to me but to all kids and maybe including their parents. In pictures and likely in most behavior and thought we were so normal.

We fought lions in the front yards of our neighbors.We built fortresses behind the protection of parents houses. We sailed on voyages of discovery. We made up games where we could be normal tyrannical and flawed grown ups.We commiserated defeat with our leader and rushed to try again. We were explorers to parts unknown. We formed unions and allegiances. We were just kids; hangin' out, going to school, being friends with people around us and playing all the time.
We didn't know that inside the houses of our neighbors lived lives that we could never have imagined; lives that even the most informed gossip columnists couldn't predict.

Granted, normalcy did exist, but it did so along social immorality, domestic abuse, political struggles, race riots, psychological turmoils and addictions galore. They all had to live somewhere. Some of them even lived in my house. I just thought it was all normal.

Maybe it is. Maybe it still is and it's still my perspective that's not focused or defined.
I mean . . . when I think about all the kids that came out of our little neighborhood and find that there are teachers, managers, bankers and firemen I truly believe that I lived a normal life. But there are also psychotic geniuses, disturbed social outcasts, full-fledged convicted felons and most likely members of organized crime syndicates by now. They all seemed pretty normal when we shared a neighborhood.