I don't recall being an angry or violent child, but I was definitely physical. in 1st or 2nd grade I remember me and another kid were scufflng, for no particular reason except to be wrestling. We ended up on the ground, with me rather proudly on top, when a friend of his came up and dumped a handful of dirt and gravel on me.
Dirt and gravel is what I was rolling in, so that isn't what set me off; the real problem was I felt the stuff roll into my ear, bounce on my eardrum. The dirt and gravel were IN MY HEAD! The teachers rescued the boys from my panicked wrath, and I got paddled because both boys insisted I started the fight. In my eyes those boys lied, and adults I was told to trust and believe failed to trust and believe me. I felt betrayed; my punishment didn't seem fair.
One Sunday night not long thereafter I went to bed and did some thinking while waiting for sleep to come. Mom and Dad were at the kitchen table doing adult stuff. Fresh in my mind was a preacher's recent assertions about who went to hell and who went to heaven. As a child I knew I was "innocent" and would automatically go to the good place.
The preacher had explained in detail the suffering due those bound to hell. Perhaps as part of the sermon he also asserted that the righteous would be washed in the lake of forgetfullness so they wouldn't feel badly about loved ones who went to hell instead of heaven. Another point the preacher made clear was sin, any sin, damned you, even if the sin came one second after you were saved, and as humans we were bound to sin.
The idea, of course, was to insure people went to church and were washed clean of sin as often as possible, and to walk on moral eggshells in between. For me, letting those concepts roll around in my brain, I came to some. . . disquieting conclusions.
What if we all died suddenly. Me, my younger brother, and little sister would go to heaven, no questions asked. Now, if Mom and Dad hadn't sinned, they'd be there too. But what if they made a mistake, somehow, and ended up going the wrong way? To be honest, this situation concerned me more in regard to my Mom, for some reason.
They would end up in hell, suffering, missing us kids, while we kids would be with the angels, totally oblivious to our parents' suffering. While knowing we kids were okay might be good, they'd also know we had forgotten them so our eternity would not be troubled. As for me, I would be mind-controlled to ignore or forget my parent's plight.
That didn't seem fair. But what if the scenario was turned around? What if I was the one sent to hell for some reason, say on my 13th birthday? The rest would be happy in heaven, ignorant or uncaring of my suffering. Either heavenly management would force my mother to forget me and the love she had for me, or change her so she simply didn't care. These conclusions seemed to make it clear that God and Heaven and all the rest wasn't what the preachers seemed to think. Stealing memories and controlling minds were, to me, almost worse than anything Hell might bring to bear.
I tried for some years after that, but church and I eventually parted ways. At the age of seven I'd learned that life was unfair, from the schoolyard to the gates of Heaven itself. In the almost half-century since I haven't seen anything to change that observation. Fairness isn't impossible, but we just need to remember it isn't something you get, it's something you make.
And it might help if you don't think about it too much.
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