Feral children, also known as wild children or wolf children, are children who’ve grown up with minimal human contact, or even none at all. They may have been raised by animals (often wolves) or somehow survived on their own. In some cases, children are confined and denied normal social interaction with other people.
I was not a feral child by definition. I wasn’t deprived of social interaction and I certainly wasn’t raised in the wild by wolves.
By outward appearances, my childhood would have to be considered normal. But the truth is, we were raised feral, my siblings and I.
Mom didn’t sent me to kindergarten. And, I avoided the end of Grandmom’s porch, where my cousins played school. I was intimidated. My cousins appeared to be very good at playing school. I was not interested.
God knows exactly what it was that held my interest. I can only speculate. I remember first that I was free. In this, I mean that I have no recollection of guidance, and no recollection of holding any desire to be guided.
I was pretty sure of myself. And I was naturally cautious.
I liked other people but preferred wandering on my own. I built stuff out of old pieces of wood. I wandered into the fileld, stream, and woods behind the house. I walked a half-mile to grandmom’s big house on Vermillion Street. I walked nearly a mile to wander around the college campus where Mom had gone back to school. I purchased a pocket knife at Jennings Store, stole a piece of bubblegum from Bradley’sDrug Store, and went with my brothers and sisters at night to the Athen’s Theater, where we watched King Kong Verses Godzilla.
Mom called all of us kids together, all six of us. It was a serious time. She told us she was divorcing Dad, because of his drinking, and that we’d not see much of him anymore.
I guess it was an emotional and difficult thing for Mother, And, I don’t know how the other kids took the news. I only had a few memories of Dad. I liked him. I admired him. I knew he had a drinking problem, a preference for a strong clear liquid in an ominous shaped bottle - called Vodka.
Dad couldn’t leave Vodka alone. He drank it and became useless. He lost his job and his family. He would go to rehabilitation. He’d get out and find God. Then he’d start drinking again. He’d nearly remarry.
One day, when I was a Senior in high school living 500 miles away, having had no contact with Him for years, Dad would go get drunk one last time, at the Blue Jay Bar, down Route 20 from Grandmom’s house.
Dad got beat up that night, at the Blue Jay. Someone found him found him out in the parking lot, beaten up, passed out, and nearly frozen, falling out the door to his car. He was taken to the hospital where he died.
The Blue jay burned down shortly thereafter.
So when Mom told us about the divorce, 14-years before Dad would die, I took it well. Nothing would change. Dad had spent no time with me.
And, for that matter, Mom didn’t pay much attention to me either. I was one of six children, the fifth.
My Mother was a single mom of 33 raising six children, one girl and five boys, while attending college full time, studying art.
She managed to provide a warm house and we always had enough food. What she didn’t provide was close supervision, and this I appreciate immensely.
I did know love. Mom was there. She wasn’t dominating but she was loving.
