Do you ever look back on things you thought of as a kid and compared to how you view the same things now, think some things made more sense the first way you perceived it?

A few days ago I got to thinking about the things I thought or the way I knew things as a kid, and it is a much more simplistic way to look at a lot of things and maybe not very practical especially in today's world, but I'm not sure that was a bad thing.

One thing I think about, when I was a kid I knew people took pills for medicine when they were sick, I knew people got sick once in a while, I didn't know some people needed pills every single day of their lives, especially psychiatric pills, I didn't know anything about mental illness as a kid, all I knew was that some people were normal and some were crazy. To be honest I don't know that that's a bad way for a kid to grow up because I never had that idea 'oh everybody takes pills, sometimes for no reason at all, sometimes to feel good, so maybe I should try it too', pills were only if you were sick and even then I never wanted any because they made me sick and I couldn't swallow them, and if somebody would've told me then that people swallow whole bottles' full for no reason, I would've thought THEY were crazy.

Another thing when I was a kid, I had never heard of things like trauma or post traumatic stress, it never occurred to me that by living through something horrible or tragic, that THAT would be grounds for seeing a shrink. In my child's mind the way I saw it was you went through something horrible: somebody died, you got kidnapped, you were almost killed, etc., you get over it and move on with your life like everything else and that was that. Another thing I'm not sure is a bad mindset for kids to grow up with because I knew bad things happen, you have nightmares about those bad things, but everybody has nightmares and they're all just dreams and dreams don't mean anything once you wake up. I mean that's what we're taught when we're tiny, no matter how scared we are or how real it is, we're told it's not real, it can't hurt us, so don't let it bother us, etc., and it doesn't always work but that's what we're told. We're expected to just get over it no matter how frightening it is, so why wouldn't the same logic apply when you were older? But that's just me.

Anybody else got a then and now view on life that they'd like to share?

I did not read your post.

It was long.

Honestly, I always wondered about Dad's mistresses....Especially Kathy or Cathy. She was the one he really loved and now that I am older and know a bit about her history, I so want to seek our her parents or her kids. She is dead, that I know. But I want to know her parents.

Yes and I really like your post and the ideas you brought up. It brings to mind somethings I always believed when I was a kid.

I thought that the only reason people stole money was because they were hungry and needed it to pay for food to eat. Or they needed money to pay for shelter.

In other words, they didn't steal for any other reason other than they were poor. I never would have understood people like Bernie Madoff or the guy who ripped off all the people by embezzling the pension funds and 401ks from the members of my union. In many ways I still don't understand why. Both of them were already rich as Midas.

I thought that doctors always were able to cure people because they went to school to learn how to do it and teachers were always smarter than students because they went to school to learn more than the average person.

And grownups knew more because they had lived longer and therefore had a longer time to acquire more knowledge.

And all medicine was good for you otherwise why else take it?

And no one would harm a kid because they were, well a kid.

Gosh I could go on! But you the idea; totally different picture as an adult of course, but that's called growing up.

Minerva wrote:

Yes and I really like your post and the ideas you brought up. It brings to mind somethings I always believed when I was a kid.

I thought that the only reason people stole money was because they were hungry and needed it to pay for food to eat. Or they needed money to pay for shelter.

In other words, they didn't steal for any other reason other than they were poor. I never would have understood people like Bernie Madoff or the guy who ripped off all the people by embezzling the pension funds and 401ks from the members of my union. In many ways I still don't understand why. Both of them were already rich as Midas.

You really had a point with this one, as a kid I don't think ANY of us knew what embezzling was and when we thought about somebody stealing, we thought about bank robberies or home burglaries, people in black clothes and masks busting in with guns and taking what they wanted. And I'm with you, as a kid I never really thought about what kind of people would be thieves or what they would take the money and goods for, like were they rich, were they poor, was it a matter of survival to them, etc.?

You really had a point with this one, as a kid I don't think ANY of us knew what embezzling was and when we thought about somebody stealing, we thought about bank robberies or home burglaries, people in black clothes and masks busting in with guns and taking what they wanted. And I'm with you, as a kid I never really thought about what kind of people would be thieves or what they would take the money and goods for, like were they rich, were they poor, was it a matter of survival to them, etc.?[/quote]

I know! I remember thinking if only they had food and shelter they wouldn't need to steal. I didn't understand why they couldn't have jobs like my mom and dad did because I thought that's how everyone was supposed to get money.

We had a box we would put in our extra pennies for the poor people. I thought it was only poor people who didn't have money or who needed it. It was logical to me as a kid that those were the ones who would steal if they were desperate enough.

Of course when you are a kid, you really do believe the good guys always win too because they're good. That's kid logic.