Autobiography by Larry Larcom
(Under Construction)
Introduction to a Different Kind of Person
I’ve spent a lifetime dealing with a personal condition called ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder, which is different than ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. I am not hyperactive. I tend to be reclusive rather than getting super hyperactive. I tend to enjoy being by myself and doing my own thing. There are artists that are this way also. They can spend hours by themselves doing what they do best, painting pictures.
I prefer to look at it as being different, rather than being cursed with some sort of disorder. It is a different way of being that has its advantages as well as its setbacks. Many such people can have a variety of strengths and skills that can amaze the normal.
As mentioned, a person can be a brilliant artist that wows the world with what they are able to put on canvas. However, if they are not good at taking multiple-choice tests, their grade point average in school is potentially going to be much less than remarkable. They may not fit into the educational mold that represents being a stellar student, but they can have their own types of brilliance which can contribute greatly to the betterment of society.
If employers understood it better, they could take advantage of like unique talents which potentially can dwarf the efficiency and quality of normal persons taking on the same specific tasks. I am an example of this type of individual and will be providing insights into this sort of phenomenon. These potential accomplishments easily include supper stellar level varieties that can boggle the mind.
Having a super active mind that wants to go in its own direction is a more accurate description of the ADD version that I have. It is a mind that is opposed to being corralled and disciplined. It has places to go, much to see, much to discover and behold. On the creative side of it, if it is going to create something it has the propensity to desire creating that which is unique in its expression. Be it simple, or complicated it desires to be on fresh ground. The norm seems boring and stupid.
Depending on how you look at it, having ADD in some ways is superior to the established norm. Why dwell on “what is” when there is a superior “what will be” to behold. If it is the established normal it is mundane and dull. It is like a “let’s get going and get to something else” attitude. In a sense, being normal can be looked at as more of a “disorder” than having a super active mind.
I plan on showing you that which I know that you don’t know. My mind has been in many places that your mind has never ventured to go. If you stick with me and hear what I am saying, you will be enlightened and gain a better understanding of life. I know more than you do because my mind is super active and it is probably safe to say that it has been to more places than yours has.
The ups and downs of my Younger Years
I was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan where both of my parents were born and raised.
Between my kindergarten and first grade years in school, my parents packed their family of 8 into our old Studebaker and moved us all to Colorado where my siblings and I finished our growing up. I consider Salida, Colorado as my hometown where I spent my sixth grade through high school years of my life. First grade through 5th grade were dominated with sporadic moving around in search of some sort of stability in life.
Salida is where both of my parents spent the majority of their lives and are buried side by side in a quaint cemetery in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. After, arriving in Colorado my parents added more children to the family which ended up being a total of 12 family members, two parents and 10 children which included a pair of twins.
Surprisingly though, we were toted around in the same Studebaker for much of our young family period. It was a four-door sedan like the one shown below but not so new looking:
Notice how the back door opens backwards and looks much smaller than the front door. How would you fit a family of twelve in something like this? My father was asked that quite often. His favorite response was, “Well, in the front, I sit behind the wheel to drive, my wife rides shotgun with the youngest in her lap, and one kid sits between us. Then we open the back doors and tell the rest to get in.” This car had two bench seats and no seatbelts. The chart below shows the typical seating arrangement that we ended up with.
My all time favorite person in life was my dad, Louis Edward Larcom. For sure, he wasn’t perfect, but to me he was an ideal “daddy.” He was friendly, had a listening ear, and always had something interesting to say. He loved to go for walks and make friends with complete strangers he met along the way. I don’t remember him ever punishing me. He always treated me kindly and endeavored to give me advice in a positive manor.
My father was a marine during World War 2 who fought in the pacific arena. The main battle he participated in was the battle for the island of Okinawa. He said he lost ten foxhole companions in three weeks during the worst of the fighting there in Okinawa. After the war he returned home and married his high school sweet heart, my mom, and then proceeded to father their ten children. He was proud of his fathering of ten children that made up for the ten war companions he lost during WWII.
My mom though, hated housework and being cooped up with ten children. She wanted to be a world traveler rather than what she saw as a stay home slave. She however was of a fruitful family line. Her mom had 10 children and lost one to a childhood disease. She had 10 children before reaching the age of 32 and feared that she was going to end up with 18 children and needed to put a stop to it. Without telling my dad, she had her tubes tied to keep herself from having more children.
Neither of my parents graduated from High School which was probably due to growing up in a rough neighborhood and having been sidelined by WWII. They were both ashamed of their lack of education and encouraged us children to get a college degree. Three of us succeeded at getting college degrees. I, however, was not a good student due to ADD and struggled all the way through it, including college.
I basically didn’t learn how to read until I was halfway through high school. No one could teach me how to read. I took my parents advocacy seriously and wanted to get a good education. After my sophomore year in high school I realized that I was in trouble. I decided to device my own way to learn how read. I spent the whole summer teaching myself how to read and succeeded at doing so. I eventually earned a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering. My grades weren’t great, but I did it anyway and had a reasonable successful career as a research and development engineer. I have my name on some patents and feel okay about my career as an engineer but realize I could have done better.
The journey along the way though was not easy, because I am a different kind of a fellow. As mentioned I was born in Muskegon, Michigan and attended kindergarten before moving to Colorado. When I think about it, my experiences in my life in my Michigan days were very telling.
To set the stage, we lived in a two bedroom house that resembled a shack. It wasn’t very much bigger than a single wide mobile home. Interestingly, we lived between an American Indian family and a black family to the other side of us. We were good friends with the black family, but the Indian family never seemed to come out of their house; like they never wanted to associate with any others.
There were two small mom and pop stores within a block of each other. To me they seemed to be there mostly to sell candy to people, which was my little boy’s perspective. I probably didn’t care about the other things they had for sell. So as a result, I don’t remember anything about the other things they had for sell. Here is the layout of our street as I remember it:
This was the area of the world for which I was most familiar; especially the area around our home and directly behind the black family’s home as shown. Every morning whenever I had the chance I would race out the back door and find out what Wallwee was doing. Wallwee always had something interesting for all of us to do. He was the oldest child of the black family next door to us.
The usual gang of children that hung out together where: Wallwee; his younger sister who was my same age; my two older sisters, Ruth and Carol; and me. Wallwee may not have been his given name, but that is what we called him. It seems like there were some younger siblings in the mix too, but I can’t remember much about them. We were all really young and most of what I do remember is very vague.
What I do remember vividly is significant to point out because it has much to do with how my mind works. If it is of a particular degree of significance I remember it well. However, most of my memories of those early days have been long lost and forgotten.
In school while growing up, things like, “What is 7 time 8 equal to?” was something that needed to be remembering. Though I can remember it on occasion, eventually it fades from my memory and I can’t pull it out very readily. What this is leading to is that which my mind clings to and remembers has to have a good degree of significance or it is not going to be pulled out of my brain very readily, which is part of the having the ADD thing. It is there, but it doesn’t always come to mind when needed. Contrarily, during my Michigan younger days, there were two looks on two the faces of two individuals that I remember vividly and seemingly will never be forgotten.
Facial expression #1 was a particular look on the face of Wallwee’s dad. Something occurred that to me was unexpected and totally not understood by me. I knew it was significant, but I didn’t know how to interpret it. During the whole period of my upbringing I occasionally thought about it and attempted to interpret its meaning.
The point here is that my ADD mind looks at 7 times 8 as part of the established norm because it is already figured out and well understood. Because it is already figured out it is part of the established bore and doesn’t hold my attention. My mind wants new ground to tread on in search of answers and/or fulfillment as a form of having fun.
My ADD mind predominantly dwells outside the box and is normally motoring along at a high rate of speed. When I come across something that doesn’t make good sense to me, I tend to recognize it as an item of mystique and hammers away at it until it makes better since of me. 8 times 7 is part of the established norm and to me does not have enough mystique value that is worthy of being conquered.
One day when I went out the back door to see what Wallwee was doing, to my joy and surprise, I found the regular gang engaged in making a crudely constructed living complex for two young ducklings that Wallwee’s dad brought home with him.
There were different sections of the complex that were separated by wired mesh configurations. One area was a shallow mud puddle area for the ducklings to splash around in and another section for them to bed down in. My favorite part of it was the arch shaped tunnels made from the same wire mesh. The tunnels were supposedly configured for expressways for the ducklings to waddle through as they made their way to the various sections of the complex.
I noticed that the ducklings were not making their way through the tunneled areas. When I asked why, someone’s response was that they weren’t used to them yet.
The next day I was anxious to see if they were walking through the tunnels yet. As I made my way out to the complex where the usual gang was gathered, I was surprised to see the two ducklings lying motionless on the ground next to the complex. Wallwee’s dad was next to them digging a grave to bury them in.
I squatted down next to them in order to take a closer look at them. “What happened to them?” I asked. One of the older kids responded that during the night some neighbors snuck into the back yard and killed them. “Why did they do that?” I asked.
Wallwee’s dad immediately quit digging. I looked up to see why he quit digging. He was staring down at me with the look on his face that I have never forgotten. While growing up I would think about that look on his face and never gave up trying to interpret what it meant.
When I was an adult, I learned from my older siblings that the Black family next door was the first black family to move into the area and the residence around us did not want them there. All of our neighbors signed a petition to ban the family from the neighborhood except my naturally friendly dad. He refused to sign it and was totally not in favor of evicting our black neighbors. We were their only directly next door neighbors and caused the effort to fail.
I recognized that the two dads had become good friends. I remember that often, while we youngsters played uninhibitedly in the back area of our homes, the two dads would be standing nearby, busily chatting while they watched us play. To me it was all a part of my perfect little world.
However, when the two ducklings were killed by the neighbors, it was probably to me, the first significant indicator that my little world was not perfect. This illustrates the difference between concentrating on an uncertainty as opposed to memorizing what 7 x 8 is equal to. I have a figure-it-out type of mind compared to being in a memorizing facts oriented mindset.
Interestingly, though I am in my seventies, I still ponder the full significance of the look on Wallwee’s dad’s face. I totally don’t care if I remember what 7 x 8 is equal to. If it doesn’t pop up in my mind right away, I just punch it out in a calculator and find out what it is. Sometimes I can readily remember what it is and sometimes I can’t. But the look on the face of Wallwee’s dad seemingly will be with me forever.
Facial expression #2: A look on the face of Wallwee’s sister is another everlasting memory I have ended having. As mentioned we were the same age, which resulted in the two of us starting kindergarten together at the same nearby grade school. As a kindergartener I had too many bad experiences in school. The first day of school was no exception.
The inauguratory day of school was noisy and chaotic. I believe I had no idea what to expect. I felt out of place and greatly annoyed. I arrived late and found myself standing alongside a long set of tables in a long skinny room where the seats at the tables were already taken. There were a few of us standing along the tables wondering what to do with our selves.
As I scanned the arena, wondering what was going on, my eyes fell upon a friendly face. It was Wallwee’s sister. She was staring at me with a happy and glowing look on her face.
(To Be Continued)