"Pastor Al, how old do you feel on the inside?' Erma A., age 92 asked me. Giving it some thought I replied "19 perhaps." Then I asked "how old do you feel. Erma?" She said "about 21." That reflects my experience...with plenty o physical signs of aging, my internal clock doesn't seem to change much.
Teaching in Thailand is a bit of a step back in time. The primitive school. with wooden desks and chairs and no electronic aids, in many ways reprise the experience of my first eight years of school in a one room country school house. We had electricity but only for lights, and, after 4th grade, for the fan of the new oil stove. I have no memory of plugging anything into an electrical receptacle . There were paths instead of baths, no running water and no telephone. It seems that Thai pedagogy is not much different from what I experienced in country school. When the teachers in Thailand want to transport students it's customary to pile them into the back of a pick-up truck and drive off a practice that's recognizable from my youth.
When I think of the circumstance of my childhood it makes me feel almost ancient. School as I described it and life on the farm are far different from today's reality. Dad would wait until the Kentucky Blue Grass, June grass we called it, in our yard headed it out. Then he would mow the yard,..we had a large one...with horse mower, rake it with a horse rake and pitch it into a hay rack for cattle fodder. Just imagine mowing a city or suburban lawn with a horse mower!
Our farm was electrified when I was three but we didn't get indoor plumbing until I was ten...yes, a path instead of a bath. Ah yes, the
olden days! So how old am I to have lived that life?...and yet internally still a young man. It still shocks me when I hear people fifteen years my junior described as "elderly."
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| Computer lab at Wat Klang. |
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| Wat Klang school. |
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| 4th grade...notice the wooden desks. |
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| 3rd grade, I'm in the green shirt. |
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| Taken when I was in third grade. |
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