One of earliest childhood memories was of my mother warning me not to go to the outdoor toilet with one of the neighborhood boys.  I had to have been less than four years old because we moved to our other home in 1954 when I was four.

This memory troubled me for years as to why my mother didn’t want me going to the toilet with some boy and it hit me in my later years that she was afraid he would molest me.

I remember that the boy was a few years older than me.  All the kids in the neighborhood played together, I figured, as I didn’t really remember.  Why warn me about this one boy?

When I was a teenager I ran into this boy in school.  He was in the slow learner classes, and I didn’t come across from him often.  We exchanged pleasantries. I believe this is the first time that memory came back to me.

Another memory from about the same time period was when I stopped up the new indoor toilet at our new house.  We had just moved, and I didn’t know the rules of indoor plumbing.  I had thrown the wrapper from the toilet paper and the tube from the old one into the toilet and had flushed it down.  After using the plumber’s favorite tool, Mother and Daddy took me aside and explained the new rules of toiletry.

Photo of my cousin, Faye, my best friend from high school, Jeanie, her cousin, Trish, and me eating watermelon  in front of the house with outdoor plumbing.

Peace be with you.