A few days ago I was talking with one of the foreign students who attends the same college that I do. He described the discomfort he is feeling trying to adjust to his new environment. The foreign student told me that it is hard for him to get used to the way people treat him just because he cannot speak the English language well enough. He said, "People are not patient with me and sometimes they just walk away before I can explain what it is that I want them to understand."
             This conversation reminded me of a time in my life that I too felt like an outsider. It was a time of great upheaval in my life and a time that would bring about change in not only the rural environment I was used to, but also in the way I looked at life itself. The time of innocence was coming to an abrupt end.
             Throughout my elementary school years I grew up in a very rural area of western Indiana. Days not spent in school were spent playing in the woods with my friend Craig, living out pioneer fantasies, making hay forts in the barn, or playing in the creek that bordered our small farm. The word "drugs" did not mean anything to me. Sex and girls never
             crossed my mind, I never uttered a curse word because they did not mean anything special, and even though there was some violence in the house, it never really stayed on my mind long.
             When I was nine years old my mother divorced my adoptive father, who was the source of the violence at home. The next three years I remember a problem free life, a comfortable life where I had not a worry in the world. I did know that we were hard pressed for money so sometimes I would walk the roads in search of returnable pop bottles that I would give to Mom to help out with groceries. Mom worked very hard trying to support six children on her own and I was too young to realize just how poor we really were.
             Tracy, the new man in mom's life did realize the severity of our financial si...