That was an utterly depressing read. (not the way you retold it, but in the underlying reality of those who desire, obtain, and exercise control over the rest of us.
We just want to live our lives. They want to control our lives.
It makes me want to spit, reading that, because we have plenty of those people where I live.
Damn it.
I am sorry that the story of that lady “expert” depressed you.
The family that had lived in that farmhouse, moved to another, larger farmhouse (several boys in the family). One of the guys, was a friend for a long time. Very smart fellow who was reading and writing well - *in the 2nd grade.*
I was such a dunce, unable to write well; but I somehow knew that he was very good at reading and writing. His bedroom (an old, upstairs, outside deck-porch, converted) had stacks of books. Every time I visited, I would look at the covers and ask, “What’s this?” I did not understand how to write well.
I got “A’s” in grammar, but could not write an essay and almost flunked out of the 4th grade - yeah, sigh.
There was a fellow at Hillsdale College, who encouraged me to write (I was merely a friend of he college, not a student). Hilldale actually found me, a nobody trying to straighten out a problem. I had dared to object to some oddball, left-wing-nut developments at the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village Complex in Dearborn, MI. That put me on some mutual mailing list.
Anyway, I am accustomed to defending freedom from the leftists.
Bless you and yours. In my mind, I keep a memory of you and your gal, kissing near the WW-II statute.