Assuming anyone really wants to know, I can frame the specifics in generalities. Leaving out the more fantastic-sounding stuff, we might begin with demographic & related elements. (Hope nobody minds my use of the ampersand, a habit I may have acquired/affirmed since switching to the computer for journal-keeping eight years ago [after the short gap left at the time of my father's decease].) I can claim membership in what we might call the "Sputnik Cohort," those born at the peak of the Baby Boom. Which makes me want to start quoting from a little piece I wrote about my background some years ago:
How long did it take me to realize what an uncommonly decent background I had?
Short answer: a while.
Actually I think it was a gradual process; and it probably did, in some rudimentary way, begin in my childhood, when I dimly remember being told that our nation was somehow (I’m not sure) number one in the world. Certainly it took time to put this in perspective. As I often tell myself, I didn’t realize how good I had it. I wonder: perhaps that was a blessing in itself.
First of all I was born in the United States of America in the 20th century, which should go a long way toward defining, by global and historical standards, how well off I started. That my parents were, to put it roughly and unimaginatively, white and middle-class may add something to this understanding, as may the fact that I came along, their first child, at the height of the Baby Boom. (Being male was no liability either--and I could’t complain about my inborn state of health.) They had not been entirely spared economic hardship in their own lives but were determined that their offspring should lack nothing. Though I’ve been told since that some threats of scarcity actually occurred, no memory remains of any family problems--financial or otherwise.
I sometimes wish everyone could grow up in circumstances offering such security. Obviously this sentiment isn't much of a guide to immediate practical action, particularly in regard to race & sex. And, for good or ill, the past cannot be re-created. (Still, while the present seems a more difficult era for bringing up kids, there's something to be said for doing it here in a backwater part of the US, yet in a town like mine featuring a sort of cultural oasis. [For most of my first decade we lived next to one of the leading local intellectuals--though I was ignorant enough not to realize this--& hung around with his kids.])
As noted above, in retrospect my childhood was marked by a certain amount of (necessary?) ignorance. The older I get, the more Confucian I seemingly become, & Exhibit A pertains to my parents. As a kid, I sometimes considered them tyrants. Now I regard them as storied heroes whose like may be hard to find in these latter days. As for their number one son, he's surpassed his dad perhaps only in the weight department, with low serotonin & high cholesterol to boot--plus hypothyroidism & sleep apnea. More about him later.