Why do we do what we do when we know repercussions will follow? Why do we not do what we know we should, when others are counting on us? Is it just being stubborn? Is it in spite? Why do we say and even take an oath on something, then turn around and do the opposite?

These are most of our everyday lives. One person who says, “I always tell the truth, I never tell a lie. Why I never even tell a little white lie. It seems to me that could be a continual and near habitual liar. Swear on a tall stack of bibles right now, and after supper act another way, then swear and be damn they did not.

I have always said that to me every female is a lady until they prove otherwise. That is just the way I was reared and that is my thought process. Why is it to me, I know not of how you think or feel, that when I first meet someone and really like them, It turns out I do not like them? By the same token, people I dislike upon the initial meeting and I very much dislike, later become my best friend? Is this latter case one of two likes repel, then?

Are some of us born to study others, to analyze and examine them whereas others just float with the current? I noticed at a early age that what adults said did not reflect honorably on the truth and fact? Did they feel that small ones did not or could not comprehend or was it just their innate makeup that was controlling them. I guess the big or rather first thing was more or less the Ten Commandments. I heard adults talk about others and castigate them while they did the same thing. Once I was told that it was just business, that is how they conducted business. And the most religious people I knew, the pillars of the community were the worst. I remember once when I was like seven or nine, Mr. Thompson was thrashing. I drove a team hauling wheat to the threshbox. My job was to drive a team of horse pulling a hay wagon to the field, load it with bundles of wheat, drive the team back to the thresher, feed those bundles into the thresher and repeat this for ever how many hours we worked. I was good with a team and I worked with the men, did the same work but they were paid 25 cents an hour and Mr. Thompson told me he could not afford to pay me ten cents an hour so I got fifty cents for two full days work?

Oh, I was a young boy and field workers were hard to come by, but this leader of the community, this foundation of the local church and this local leader, cheated me, cheated on his taxes and cheated everyone who worked for him. And so it went, the store keeper who weighed the coal and instead of 1,500 pounds they were charged for a ton and when they measured pulp wood the load was always undermeasured six inches on each side. And the local deacon or elder in the church who put his shoes under a lot of beds during the day while his wife worked in the fields.

Why is it that we do these things? Why cannot we be what we are and not always try to be something we are not? Why do we have to exaggerate and act as if we were or are better than we are? Why not be ourselves and let others judge us on our actions and deeds?

Was I exceptional? Was I one of the few that saw and questioned as a small child? I do not think so. I laugh and say my sons made me walk the straight and narrow because we taught them right from wrong.