I was an accident prone kid anyway, but it has occurred to me later in life that I do feel lucky...probably most boys feel that way at some point...that I made it out of childhood. I lacked commonsense, and often did things that were just downright stupid...for much of my young life, I DID think I was stupid.
I went through the first thirty years of my life being unable to visualize myself past the age of 30...which is odd. Even until my mid-twenties, it seemed as though there was a veil beyond which I couldn’t see.
It was mildly (very mildly) unsettling, and for a while I thought it was an omen to me that I was going to die at age 30.
Then, when I turned 30, boom. I could visualize myself as an old decrepit man with gray hair and suspenders, but I couldn’t before that. Isn’t that weird?
I am reading your Dad’s article. I really enjoy it. It somehow captures the wonderful feelings of that time. I loved the feelings of being a kid in a loving, but of course not perfect family in the 60s. Nothing can be compared to those feelings of fearless abandonment to adventure and fun. We were wonderfully naive, and in the world of the 60s that was just fine. We were really blest to be able to experience the love and freedom children grew up with then.
Also, I know how you felt about not believing you were long on this earth. When I was a kid I often would get terribly sharp pains in my heart. I often froze in spot and couldn’t move. I didn’t tell my family because I didn’t want to upset them. When I was about eight I begged God to let me live until I was eighteen, which seemed a lifetime away.
When my eighteenth birthday came around I had the feeling that I might die that day, and was happy when I kept on living. At that point I was an atheist, but still said a faint thank you in my mind to the God I didn’t think existed.