Am I the oldest one here?

[Doc]

In total and complete honestly, I no longer have any idea how old I actually am. For a good long while there, it was decided by a couple of folk that I was officially born in 1952.

Getting in touch with my mother, she claims to have no idea. May have been 1950. Ish. I never really celebrated my birthday as a child. So most of the time I really didn't know how old I was. When I went into state custody, I was determined to be 9 to 10 years of age. With a question mark. I was short and stunted, and suffered from severe malnutrition as a child, and I was very very short for whatever age I was. You get this way when you survive on picking meals out of the garbage, eating other people's tablecraps, and smoking. Smoking made the hunger go away. And it was easy to get smokes.

I have no birth certificate.

Recently though, after much searching, I have contacted a relative, and she claims that I was born about 1945ish. Maybe 1947-48, about the same time as her brother.

So it seems there may be a five year or so give or take on my actual age. Whatever that may be.

As for modern appliances, I grew up in the deepest, darkest, most backwards parts of the South. I lived in places, towns, whole towns, that did not have electricity or phones. I have lived in a swamp out in the middle of nowhere. I have lived on the side of a mountain with moonshiners. I lived in dingy dirty poverty. My mother was, in simple terms, a dime a dance whore. So I grew up in honky tonks and road houses, where ever she could find work. Texas, Loosy Anna, Missy Hippy, Bama, where ever. When I was very young, I mean very very young, I can remember folk that still used horse and buggy on a regular basis and the automobile was something that only the very rich had. Televisions, the wonder that they were, in the big city, sitting in the shop windows, had screens about 3 or 5 inches wide. And sorta round. In the South, indoor plumbing was still a marvel out of most folks reach. I can remember pumping water from a pump at the kitchen sink. Having a pump inside your house was "indoor" plumbing. I can remember, as I child, the first time ever seeing a toilet. It scared me to death it did. Made a scary whooooosh gargling sound, and I wasn't about to sit on the damn thing. I vaguely remember wishing that there was a nice quiet outhouse around... And there wasn't. Being suddenly thrust into modern living was quite a shock to me as a child. Sounds funny I know, perhaps even silly or something to poke fun of, but I remember it being bloody depressing. Living in the city was nearly scared me to death... NOISE all around. Honking of cars. Bright blinking lights on all the gosh damned night. The smell of car exhaust. Buses in particular scared the whimpering snot out of me. The roar of the motor and the whoosh of the brakes. I can remember seeing a movie for the very first time... I can't remember what it was, but I sat there in total awe. Now, I barely give it a second thought. Ho hum, no big deal.

I remember other things too. Like not being able to go in the front door. Having to sit in a different spot on the bus as a child. Not being able to drink from most water fountains, or use most of the restrooms. Not being able to eat at the lunch counter or shop at Woolworth's. Having to learn in a different classroom or attend a different school, or sit in the very back of the class. I remember being physically picked up, hauled outside, and thrown into a lamp post because I went into the wrong barber shop to get my hair cut. I didn't know any better at that time, and I learned a very very hard lesson. I had been given a handful of change and told to get a hair cut while some relative of mine, an Aunt I think, was taking care of errands in the general store. I am old enough to remember when "whites only" meant just that... While I am not black, I am no where near white enough to be allowed anywhere near they had signs like that around.

**Sigh**

After typing all that out and thinking about it, I suddenly feel a whole lot older.