Hello d.o.a.: '(BTW I'm in my 60's now... so just a bit older than you . ) I'll tell you a story that my father told me. My mother had been told she couldn't have children. So it was a BIG surprise when I showed up. (She thought she had cancer at first because an acquaintance of hers, at that time, apparently had.) My father recalled that he was asleep in bed one night when a little leprechaun sort of personage appeared at the foot of the bed. The leprechaun was jumping up-&-down, clapping his hands, & yelling: do you want a boy, do you want a boy? My father recalled that he woke himself up yelling: "Yes... yes!"

My father didn't know much about the fairy folk. I suspect what he had in mind was more Disney than reality. Back when people actually believed in fairies, they were not beautiful, ethereal beings with kind hearts. They were tricksters who had no use for human beings, & who delighted in making trouble for them. So my father presumed that this little leprechaun was bringing him joyful & welcome news. In actuality, what the little fellow brought was trouble. Instead of a bouncing baby boy, what my father got was a transgendered, depressed, anxiety-ridden, self-abusive little monster who screamed constantly & would not be comforted... me.

Supposedly the fairy folk would sometimes snatch a human baby from it's cradle & replace it with a fairy baby. It seems plausible that something like this may have happened in my case, although I don't believe in fairies & I don't really believe I am one. But, anyway, I turned out to be nothing like what my father wanted. He never said anything to that effect. But I always felt like I just didn't measure up. I was, however, an only child & so I was doted on by my mother. She clung to me as though I were the only thing in her life that was worth living for. I remained more-or-less within that sphere until I was in my late twenties when I moved out of state to attend graduate school. I never looked back. My parents have both been gone now for over 20 years.

When I was little, if I did something "naughty" my father would "spank" me with his belt. I was bullied, both physically & verbally, by a gang of toughs throughout junior & senior high school, & on-&-on... I'm married but we don't have children & neither of us have any family of any consequence either. So it's just the two of us. I've now aged into retirement. (I haven't been employed for probably around 16 years.) And I now live pretty-much as what I like to refer to as an "urban hermit". I don't go out unless I have to. I neither have nor want any IRL friends. I don't know if I would say I don't trust people. But I definitely don't want anything to do with them, again IRL. (The internet is something else again.) I consider this to be my gift to humanity.