In my life of 6-10 years of age, I had numerous activities I did at home & out with friends. I wasn’t the only kid in the family anymore. There was a new addition which was my brother who was born in December. I wasn’t the center of attraction so I went out being the good kid for my parents. My dad was working at night at the mailing facility in downtown Denver while we lived in Lochbuie, which was a trailer park & close to my mom’s parents. They were so good to me when I needed to go there & be taken care of. I had a lot of love for my family of parents & grandparents. They loved me as I was the worker & played to stay busy. I stayed away if there was no one at home or my dad was sleeping during the day since he worked most of the night.
At the age of 6, I was usually helping my mom as she had to take care of my brother since he was less than a year old. I did the home cleaning which was the dishes, cleaning the table & stove after doing the dishes, & also the sweeping of the kitchen floor & vacuuming of the carpet. When I was having problems with putting the electrical plug in the outlet, I would get a charge from putting 1 prong of the plug in & then take & put my thumb or first finger on the other prong & get it in that way. I would get zapped & let go. I would do that a few times before I learned how much muscle it took at the time to actually get it in the outlet. It would give me a burst of energy as I learned how to get it in that outlet more & more. I never ever had water on my hands & tried that because I knew then that I would get more than zapped like before. How did I know? I read about electricity & water in the encyclopedias that was bought for me when I needed them to learn from. I learned a lot from those A-Z encyclopedia set of 20 books. I studied those books a lot. I went to school during the day & would go to my grandparents after school until my mom came home at a certain time. I would go after my mom called & let her parents know she was at home & I needed to be there, too. I was there to eat & help out some & do my homework I had every night after school. When I was at my grandparents, I got to watch a water fountain they had out in the front yard. I liked it when I was so close to my immediate family members. They all made me feel at home. I worked for my dad also when he was gone a lot or in bed too after work. I would use the lawnmower to cut the grass in the front to the back since our trailer was on 1 side of the property. I would get to use the grass clippers on my hands & knees since we only had the hand held manual ones in the shed. Doing work & chores were always something I just accepted as being part of the family. I felt so close to them too. Life as a kid wasn’t always fun & games. I got to play, but school work & chores were to come first. Those were the rules at our house along with pets being taken care of before running off to a friend’s house or going anywhere.
Since I was brought up in a Christian family, I went to church every time my parents went. From being a baby to now as an older adult, my life was more about knowing what was right & wrong. I was taken to church as a baby & was brought up in front of the pastor so he could show all people in church who I was & they all could say how cute I was later on. We went to activities afterwards which included volleyball or football at a park close by the church. When going to church, we would always travel back & forth to Denver to be with people we knew a lot more & loved to be with. This church was a Church of God affiliation. My mom loved to travel & drive a lot. They were both brought up in Christian families as well. Church was in their blood. I learned a lot & also made friends there always & well liked. While I was in service & sitting, I would need to use the restroom they had in church & ask to go. After I was done, I would head for the spot they had the remaining donuts at checking to get them if there were any left. I also ate a lot all the time. After church, we head for any buffets around for my parents to take me since I ate a lot. Mom & dad took me there to let me eat all I wanted at a one time fee instead of having to pay some crazy prices like now for the 3 of us & my baby brother. It was like $6/person then. As I was growing up, they still paid less than like a McDonalds or Wendys that was around. These were our family outings for the week. We would always go with my parents’ parents to have a real get together. We spent the whole day with them. We went to visit people in nursing homes as well. So learned a lot that way & tried real hard to stay out of trouble. I would get in trouble once in a great while if trying something new.
I would study after school & watch TV to keep me thinking since I had this memory problem & would need help sometimes in meaning of words or help with math problems a lot. I was able to do this & do homework, too. Then after a while, I just sat & either got bored with homework or really interested in the 1/2 hour TV shows. I would watch “The Munsters“, “Addams Family“, “Gilligan’s Island“, “Batman” & more. So I guess my dad thought that I would get behind, so he told me no TV until I got my homework done for school. Anyway, I would get my schoolwork done & then watch TV before we ate supper & then would have a little more time for us to have our study & prayer time which brought out a lot of issues we were able to talk about within the few days we could squeeze that time in for us. So I learned & took it on myself to be better & do what I needed at the age of 6.
Rodney Gottier
