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As I got older, my inquisitive and technical inclinations led be to try inventing. My problem was I was a few years too late in each case. I re-invented such classics as the atlatl, but also came up with a flexible version of the Frisbee flying disc, and counter-rotating helicopter blades (In the hopes that doing so would combat Retreating blade stall.
One event from this time still sticks in my mind to this day: Dad and I were watching PBS and the show was on location at a museum of early American history. They showed an object, and explained that there is no historical account for what the object is or what it was for. I saw Dad get slightly depressed at this and I asked him why this upset him. “Lost technology,” he said. Despite the fact that we don’t need the object, and probably won’t again, the fact that the technological advancement had been forever lost was depressing to him. When the full weight of the idea of knowledge being lost forever hit me, it bummed me out too.
As I moved into my pre-teen years, Mom’s fundementalist upbringing brought her more and more stress as she tried to reconcile practicing Wicca. Eventually, in order to bring peace, she insisted that the family start attending a Christian church of some kind. As both of my parents had attended the LDS church at some point in their lives, they agreed that this is the church that they would attend. This satisfied my mother’s insistence on a Christianity-based religion, and my dad was satisfied that we would still be learning to explore and grow in our spiritual lives, without getting a line about being an almost inescapably evil being.
It was a different experience for me, but I was able to adapt. One thing that bothered me was the idea that we had to go to a special place or talk to a certain person in order to connect. It just didn’t sit right with me. However, as I was not in charge I decided to make myself as comfortable as I could.
However, when Mom was gathering up the paganism books to be thrown out, I secretly grabbed one or two favorites, to be kept in storage. One of them wasn’t technically a pagan book, but was one on self-hypnosis, which was a source of great interest when I started reading it. I eventually gained enough control over my body that I could (with time and focus) make a body part numb or change my heart rate. I never learned to do more than that from that book, as the book was mainly about using it for therapeutic purposes. It did leave an impression, though.
Another thought that occurred to me was that if what Dad said about the different religions being different ways to approach the same thing, then I could “reverse engineer” some of the techniques I had learned and continue using them. This was a huge revelation to me. Being able to reverse-engineer talking to my “guides” to talking to “angels” for example. I had been rather skilled at dowsing, and was able to keep practicing because I was asking the angels to help me, therefore it fit with what we were supposed to be at the time.
As time went on, my discomfort only grew, however. It was nothing against what the church taught, generally. I had absolute agreement with being a good person, with family unity, with working to improve yourself not only in this mortal life, but for the rest of time. The problem I had was that the Church said “This is the Way”… and that was it. There was no room for personal discovery, no room to form a closer relationship with God because you had to be told what was right by the priest. Heaven forbid that you come to a reasoned concept that isn’t in line with the teachings. This ran head-first against what I had learned when I was young, and also went against what I had experienced after that.
By this point I was in my mid-teens, and decided that I had enough data to make an informed decision. As I wanted to live to maturity I did not tell my mother 
I hauled the secreted books out of storage, and started reading them. As I absorbed the knowledge, something Dad had told me years ago came back to memory. We had been watching Snow White and Dad told me that truthfulness is very important. In the movie (don’t know about the original), the Queen offers Snow White the apple and says that it is a magic wishing apple, and that a wish made on the apple will come true. Because she said it was so, it became so and the wish came true for Snow White. He said that when trying to apply spiritual principles to the world, truthfulness and honesty are paramount because what you say matters.
Roughly the same time that this was happening I had been lovingly coerced by my parents into playing (American) football. My sum total knowledge of the sport was that a football wasn’t round. My speed and build meant that I was a pretty good candidate for lineman, and that was where I learned the lies of the bullies: I was neither scrawny nor a weakling. I had been so convinced of it at the time that it became true for me and became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I believed myself to be weak and therefore I was weak. Football training ground that out of me in a hurry.
The years moved on with my religious and spiritual choices becoming less and less obscured from my mother’s vision until we had an agreement to disagree.
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(Thanks to Shenky for the image.)
