When I was a kid, I remember my dad, a few times, explaining to his friends or family members, that he considered himself to be " lower-middle class". I didn't understand what he meant at the time, because I was so young, and it was the only life I ever knew. I knew there were many people out there that were a lot poorer than us, and that there were other people who were alot more comfortable than us, and even very wealthy. My dad was an auto worker, working on the assembly line for a major US automaker. He had a wife and 3 kids to provide for, all about a year apart, two boys and a girl, and he never seemed to be able to save money and get ahead in life. My mom even worked at various jobs trying to better our family's financial situation, but no matter how hard they tried, it seemed they could usually not afford to bring us to full-middle class.
The first house I remember living in, we moved into when I was 3 or 4 years old. It was in the city of Inkster, Michigan. It was a small 3 bedroom ranch house on a corner lot, with a big backyard. About a year after moving in, we all felt that there was a negative energy in the house, and after a while longer, after some horrifying experiences, we came to the realization that the house was haunted. This wasn't a case of "we thought we heard things" or "we thought we saw things" that shouldn't have been there, we saw/heard things that I won't go into right now, it was real. Real enough for my mom to seek help from our church, and our pastor and his assistant came over to our house, bibles in hand, and walked around praying for God to drive out the evil spirits. It seemed to help, but I continued to have reoccuring nightmares, and I have even had one of the same a little over a year ago.(at age 39) Of course those nightmares don't affect me now like they did when I was young, but it amazes me that I still have them this many years later. We moved out of that house probably less than a year after the pastors visit, and the tension in our family was cut literally in half. Tensions that continued were mostly between me and my brother and between my dad and us boys. My dad was a Vietnam Veteran, and he didn't take no crap from anyone. He was strict in his dicipline, and many times, my brother and I received punishment in the form of pain, usually by using his belt, or a smack in the face or the head. My mom beleived in using the belt too, and if we were diciplined by her, we usually got it 100 times worse when my dad got home from work, and she told him. I never blamed my dad for this because it kept us in line, for the most part, and created a high tolerance for pain. Knowing what I know now, my dad probably suffered from PTSD, and probably went too far in his dicipline, but I always looked up to him and felt loved and cared for. I still think to this day I have the best dad in the world, and hold no resentment toward him. He has helped me "over and beyond" all the years of my life, and I love him very much.
My brother and I have had a very shaky relationship most of our life. We would fight all of the time, from the years we lived in the above mentioned house in Inkster, all the way until I was about 17 years old. He never beat me in a fight, and could only get back at me by telling my mom or dad on me for hurting him. By the age of 8, I was blamed so much for hurting him, that any time my brother was taken to the hospital for an injury, the nurses or doctors would ask "was this injury caused by his brother Wesley again?". I didn't know it at the time, but I was causing very deep rooted resentment in my brother towards me. I resented him alot back then, because I remember he would sometimes lie, and blame things on me that I did not do, because he knew my parents would beleive it, because I had hurt him so much already. I would get punished by my dad (very painfully) and I would hate my brother for a couple of days, and then got over it, until the next time. The last fight I remember we had, was when I was 17, and he was 14. He started it, while in the living room, and he thought he was finally going to be able to get the best of me, and was standing in a fighting stance toward me, but he made the mistake of saying something that pissed me off. I took a running jump kick at him, hitting him in the chest, and causing him to fall back over the arm of the couch. I made the mistake of doing this while my dad was home. When My dad heard my brother yell out in pain and cry, he ran into the living room and started yelling "what happened?". My brother was able to get out "Wes...Wes" as he was laying in the floor crying and holding his chest. My dad turned to me and Beat my ass!!! I guarentee that I got the worse end of that deal. (x 10) I know I deserved it because I could have seriously injured him, but for a while he had tried to get me to fight him, because he thought he could win a fight with me, because he could beat everyone else he would fight, including guys my age.
Years went by, and we were young adults, and we talked about our fights when we were younger, and my brother claimed he didn't hold a grudge. We became good friends, and there seemed to be nothing that we wouldn't do for eachother. Little did I know the "timebomb/s" I had helped plant in my younger brother in our early to late childhood would come back to haunt me as I was approaching 40 years old. More about this story will be revealed soon.
Wes
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