I’m glad I’m not a child growing up in today’s world of too many choices!

What is with having to decide whether or not a person feels like being a boy or a girl when one is only ten years of age? What is wrong with just being a kid? If one wants to play with dolls and he is a boy so what? It doesn’t mean he is meant to be a girl and has to make a sex change.

When I was ten, the only choice I had to make was to run or fight, I usually chose the former. Once in a blue moon I chose the latter. The only fight I ever picked was one I lost.

I don’t remember picking my own clothes to wear at that age. I know I didn’t start buying my own clothes until I was at least thirteen. I bought them at Collens Store with money I earned picking fruit at the Wally Smith tree fruit farm.

At school, right up until the end of grade nine, we had no choice as to what program we would be in. Then, we were required to choose one of three options, academic, industrial, or commercial.

I was no academic, that was clear to me! I struggled with the industrial but didn’t give the commercial a second thought and chose the industrial. Of course I bombed in the industrial and eventually quit school.

Even before I quit, making a program choice was a huge, insurmountable problem for me. Part of the problem was my inability to sit down and look at all the options objectively. I think that is the problem with a ten year old child choosing to change their sex, they don’t have the emotional maturity to make such a life changing decision.

When I was moving into the teen years, unbeknown to me, I had a hormone deficiency which affected the way I saw myself and my environment. This was something I was born with but today live a quality life due to drug supplements.

Drug supplements give me the stability I need to live a balanced life, something unknown to me until I reached the age of thirty and discovered the problem.

Making a decision is still a difficult task, the drug supplements help me manage life but don’t make decision making any easier.

Something to note is that when I was stricken with the transient ischemic attack ( tia ) on my left arm, it also changed my focus. Making a decision became much easier because there seemed to be fewer facts to consider.

I was able to synthesize the facts quicker which made for a speedy decision. The major problem I saw with the “new me”, was that I cared less for people and how they felt.

My enjoyment of living each day doubled. It was a thrill to be alive! The tia on my right arm brought me back to where I was before the encounter with the strokes. Decision making is difficult again, but I enjoy people more.

If a child decides to change their sex before puberty, they are in for a big surprise when they mature for if there is one thing we can count on, it is that change is guaranteed to happen regardless of how much we think we can control it.

I’ve made my choices the right ones, and I’m glad that I grew up when I did, and I still think that children today have way too much choice.

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