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If you're the son of Buffy and Big Foot, what do you get for free? Is your soul special compared the others in your cohort?
Maybe nothing. Maybe not. Maybe what you get is a somewhat unusual sense of physical well-being. (You don't get sick often; you're fit; physical activities come to you easily.) Perhaps a sense, from what happens to your parents that others in your cohort are dangerous when they get irrationally scared, especially when they get together and feed each others' fears.
Your mom is still with you, and she has to struggle to keep you both housed and fed. You see that she's able to do that because other people help her, and that you wouldn't make it without them. But you also see that you wouldn't make it without your mother's struggle and her sacrifices.
You will also struggle. School is the first place. You're a smart kid. You're also impatient with people who insist that you follow their arbitrary rules when it's pretty obvious that they're just making them up to see who will follow, and who won't. You don't necessarily get along very well with other kids your age, especially when you all make it to about eleven years old and suddenly notice that some people are in and some people are out.
First, you don't feel like one of the in kids. They tend to follow the arbitrary rules, not only the ones made up by the administrators, but also the ones made up by each other. Then you realize that you don't feel like one of the out kids. The out kids are not all alike, of course. Some are failed in kids. Others a like minority in kids, who would be in if their contingent were larger. The ones more like you, the non-belongers, are only a group in the sense that you can group them together after you take all the other groups away. Once you look at them closely, they're all different from each other, not necessarily compatible.
In your childhood, you have acquaintances, but not friends.
Where you do feel you belong is outside, in the natural world. In the natural world, there are rules, and you do have to discover them. But no one, or at least no one you can identify, is making them up just to see who will follow them. The rules seem to provide a structure, one that's the same for everyone. They're not always easy to follow, but they're fair.
Nature, as well, doesn't have in and out like at school. It's more complicated than that, and there's generally room for so many different arrangements that a binary, in-out model wouldn't begin to explain any of what is going on. And there's lots going on. The in-out model must just be something kids go through as they're growing up and trying to work through budding desires. And human sexuality, at least seen through the conventions that all the "good" followers are trying to live up to, is certainly a binary thing.
Maybe nothing. Maybe not. Maybe what you get is a somewhat unusual sense of physical well-being. (You don't get sick often; you're fit; physical activities come to you easily.) Perhaps a sense, from what happens to your parents that others in your cohort are dangerous when they get irrationally scared, especially when they get together and feed each others' fears.
Your mom is still with you, and she has to struggle to keep you both housed and fed. You see that she's able to do that because other people help her, and that you wouldn't make it without them. But you also see that you wouldn't make it without your mother's struggle and her sacrifices.
You will also struggle. School is the first place. You're a smart kid. You're also impatient with people who insist that you follow their arbitrary rules when it's pretty obvious that they're just making them up to see who will follow, and who won't. You don't necessarily get along very well with other kids your age, especially when you all make it to about eleven years old and suddenly notice that some people are in and some people are out.
First, you don't feel like one of the in kids. They tend to follow the arbitrary rules, not only the ones made up by the administrators, but also the ones made up by each other. Then you realize that you don't feel like one of the out kids. The out kids are not all alike, of course. Some are failed in kids. Others a like minority in kids, who would be in if their contingent were larger. The ones more like you, the non-belongers, are only a group in the sense that you can group them together after you take all the other groups away. Once you look at them closely, they're all different from each other, not necessarily compatible.
In your childhood, you have acquaintances, but not friends.
Where you do feel you belong is outside, in the natural world. In the natural world, there are rules, and you do have to discover them. But no one, or at least no one you can identify, is making them up just to see who will follow them. The rules seem to provide a structure, one that's the same for everyone. They're not always easy to follow, but they're fair.
Nature, as well, doesn't have in and out like at school. It's more complicated than that, and there's generally room for so many different arrangements that a binary, in-out model wouldn't begin to explain any of what is going on. And there's lots going on. The in-out model must just be something kids go through as they're growing up and trying to work through budding desires. And human sexuality, at least seen through the conventions that all the "good" followers are trying to live up to, is certainly a binary thing.
