I am a time traveler.  No this isn't science fiction, I have always traveled backwards in time, never thinking of the future for I was always afraid of traveling into the future.  I guess, I was afraid of what I might find there.
    At first my trips were short for I was younger then and didn't have so far to go to visit the boy I once knew but as time went on the distance became greater to the various points along the way.
    There was one rule I had to observe on each of my trips, I couldn't interfere in any way with the past. I couldn't touch, hold nor speak to the boy.  I couldn't let the boy know in any way I was there.  I could only observe the events which unfolded before my eyes.
    I never could get back past his fourth birthday, only a few months before his father had died.  I watched him walk down the street with his hand in his dad's, his dad buying him a "Root Beer."  Sitting on his dad's lap as his dad sang, "She will be coming around the mountain."  I watched at a time the boy was in the kitchen and had reached up and pulled the hot iron, that his mother was using to iron clothes with, down across his arm.  I tried to stop him but because I was a time traveler I couldn't reach across the gulf of time to him for a force had held me back.  For the rest of his life he carried a scar on his arm where the iron had burned him.
    I watched him lay in bed and cry the night after his dad had died.  I wanted to go to him and comfort him but I couldn't reach him.  I wanted to tell him, his future would be good but I knew better than that for I had already been there.  As he was to grow older I would see him cry many times.  That had been after he had lost his mother too and had been committed to an institution.  A beginning of a long trip through his unhappy and at times terrifying childhood.
    As this boy grew up in various institutions, I could hear his thoughts and feel those things he felt.  I could see the world through his eyes as he saw it.  He was lonely, there was no question about that.
    I tried to stop the beatings and other things that were happening to the boy but I could only observe as the boy screamed and begged for them to stop hurting him.  I tried to explain to the adults how they were hurting the boy but they couldn't hear me for I was only a time traveler, an unseen observer in their time.
    I have traveled back many times to see the boy as he grew older.  I watched the beatings and sexual abuses which were only the minor things that were happening to him.  I watched and listened to him cry as he laid naked on the hard concrete floor in the dark and barren isolation cells.  Though I had watched, listened and felt within myself I couldn't reach out to him and tell him I was there, I could only observe and cry for the little boy who once lived there.
    This is the story of that boy, only as that boy could have told it.  This is not a happy story.  It is about abuses to a boy in about every possible way abuses could be committed to a boy.  It is about his thoughts and feelings.  About how he viewed life as he grew up in institutions and some of the things which happened to him along the way.  It is about a boy who couldn't conform to the ways of the institutions, not that he didn't want to.
    Come, join me in my time machine and I will take you back there to hear, to see and feel some of the things I have.  As a time traveler, there are no secrets kept from you so you will see and hear everything.  You will see the hurt, the loneliness, the beatings, sexual abuses and much more.  You will hear the thoughts of that boy as he relates his story.  I forewarn you, it is not a pleasant trip.  I will assure you, you will never forget your journey.
    The first stop we will make will be shortly after the boy's thirteenth birthday, where we will join him, laying naked in a barren isolation cell.  We won't stay very long for his story doesn't begin nor end there.  Then we will journey on back in time, to a time when it essentially all began.

    This is a true story based on events which happened to The Orphan Boy as he grew up in institutions.  There are no secrets kept, not even about The Orphan Boy.  Also you will have a peek into his life, to see how those childhood years affected him after he came of age.
    The events, the names of the places and the people are all true.   No one is protected, not even The Orphan Boy.

From youth to old age is but a short journey, travel it well and never travel alone.
*by LEP*

Thank you for your time and patience.
The Orphan Boy

WARNING! By the author.     All events, the names of all of the places and people herein are real, no one is protected, not even The Orphan Boy.  All events portrayed in these pages happened to a young boy (who had no choice) but if you feel uncomfortable with child abuse in state institutions and elsewhere, in all of it's forms, sexual and otherwise, comitted by adults outside of the institutions, by older "students" and by some of the staff of institutions who are paid to protect that child, if you can't deal with the real world as it is and you don't want your children to know, then I recommend you go no further.  Hopefully, your children or grandchildren will never have to live the life The Orphan Boy was forced to live.

        I received a message from a reader a short time back, he had asked, "If you could live your childhood over, how would you live it differently?"  I simply replied, "Make them kill me."  And I don't say that lightly.

    If you were as a child committed to one or more of the institutions mentioned in these pages, no matter what period of time, long ago or just back a ways, please, PLEASE sign-in on the guest book for others who were there with you, and are possibly searching for you may find you.  Some of the key phrases search engines are looking for are these institutions.  I have searched through most of my life for my childhood friends, through these pages I hope to find a few.
    You others, you who weren't in institutions as a child, come on in and sit for a spell, listen to the great music, read a while and learn of a world you may never knew existed, for I sure would like to tell you about it.  Maybe after you have read a bit you could stop back and visit my guest book.  It is all free and open for you too read.  I am sure you will be very satisfied you did, but if you have to go, please view my guest book, see what others have said before you go.

To the entrance of my GUEST BOOK.  There you will have a choice of viewing or entering data into my book.

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A Boy I Use To Know
Written by Larry Eugene Peterson

MIDI version by the courtesy of the MIDI Picking Harry Todd, the best on the NET.
If you do nothing else, go visit Harry's Page. (Click on one of the Pics)
But PLEASE book mark me before you go, once there I know you'll forget me.

Harry Todd
The Gitpicker
As Deb at MIDI Haven said, "Sure was a cutie at 16."
I think he was about as cute as I was at that age -- maybe not quite.

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"I Cried For A Little Boy Who Once Lived There." ©