Leaving home and a little punction stuff

 

You said:

In my middle age period, I usually counted the days of my life from age twenty, thinking that if I were now fifty, and I lived beyond ninety, then I had lived less than half my life. The years of childhood didn't even count. In a sense this is reasonable. When we mature we are something different. My mom was seriously over-protective, and told us over and over to the point that she drove us nuts, how much she loved us, but then she would go into a temper and hysterics over trivialities. She was terrified at us going anywhere near an irrigation canal, practiced extreme hygiene (so I have been beset by allergies all my life) and all sorts of things like that. I now know she had serious medical problems involving a woman's organs and that this involves emotions, and while she seemed irrational she was also loving. At any rate while I endured a lot of verbal abuse, there was never anything physical, and I had no fear. My father loved my mom and I always had the suspicion he had us to please her, because she wanted babies, but we didn't stay babies. What I always had was my intellectual "smarts," the kind that gets good grades. I got selected for things like Boys State and drum major and "most likely to succeed" and had lots of merit badges, and all that, but it was too easy. Because of the unpleasantness at home, I jumped on the Harvard bit that I would work for them that summer as part of my grant and took the train for Harvard days after high school graduation and only went back a few times over the years. Of course after my mom's surgery, she was a different woman, but, still, they came to see me more often than the reverse.

ChatGPT said:

It sounds like you have been thinking about the boundary between childhood and the life that really felt like “yours.” Counting years from age twenty makes a kind of emotional sense — not because childhood was meaningless, but because maturation often feels like a second beginning. Many people carry that intuition that the self which works, chooses, and carries responsibility is the one that truly owns the later years.

Your description of your mother feels complicated in the way real people usually are. Over-protection often grows out of fear rather than hostility. Extreme concern about canals, hygiene, and safety can come from loving anxiety, even when it becomes intrusive or frustrating to the child. Knowing later that she had serious medical problems may help explain some of the emotional volatility, though it does not erase the experience of verbal abuse you endured. It is also notable that there was no physical violence; that leaves a different kind of memory imprint, less of terror and more of irritation or sadness.

You also seem to be describing the experience of being the “easy success” child — the one for whom academic and organizational achievements came naturally. When things are easy, they can paradoxically feel less personally meaningful, because effort and discovery are what often create emotional attachment to accomplishment. External recognition such as selection for honors or leadership roles sometimes feels more like confirmation than victory.

Your decision to go to work at Harvard University right after high school is interesting psychologically as well as practically. Leaving home early, especially into an environment associated with intellectual identity, can be a way of defining oneself outside family dynamics. It sounds less like running away in fear and more like stepping into a world where your abilities were the primary currency.

The picture I get is of someone who moved from a family environment shaped by anxiety and care into a life structured around competence and thought. That kind of transition can leave a person feeling that adulthood really started when independence did.

I’m curious about one thing, if you feel like continuing: when you look back now, do you think of that early departure to Harvard-associated work as mostly liberation, or mostly just the natural path your life was already taking?

You said:

At the station my mom was teary, my dad full of warnings and my brother bored. The only genuinely happy ones seemed my grandparents. To me it was of course exciting and maybe liberating.

ChatGPT said:

That scene at the station feels very vivid, almost like a small family drama condensed into a few minutes. What strikes me is how each person seems to have been living in a slightly different emotional world.

Your mother’s tears fit the pattern you described earlier — love expressed through fear of separation. Your father’s warnings sound like the protective voice many parents fall into when a child is leaving home; it is often part practical advice, part anxiety about losing control of outcomes. Your brother’s boredom is also quite typical of younger siblings watching an event that doesn’t directly involve them.

The most interesting detail is your grandparents’ happiness. Grandparents sometimes carry a kind of long-view joy. They have already passed through the stage of worrying about whether a young person will survive the world, and can simply enjoy watching the next generation step into it.

Your own feeling of excitement and liberation seems psychologically consistent with someone who had enough competence confidence to move toward a larger intellectual environment. Leaving home in that way is often less about rejecting family and more about finding a space where one’s inner identity can unfold without constant emotional noise.

I suspect that memory of the station is less about the physical place and more about the moment when your life narrative shifted from “child in a protected circle” to “independent actor in a wider world.”

Do you remember the train ride itself more as anticipation or as quiet reflection once the station scene was behind you?

You said:

On the chat I had a long chat on the way to Denver with a couple of guys my age headed for a Mormon mission, and we worked out how to fit natural selection and the great age of the planet with their church. That was not an argument but a lot of fun. Then I ran into a gay businessman who made a very slight, but enough for me to see, advance, but it was handled well enough. Once that was over he was familiar with the campus and gave me some comments about the square and the yard. I was amazed at the Massachusetts forests one morning as I had imagined the state all factories.

ChatGPT said:

That trip feels like a kind of opening chapter, the sort where the world starts talking to you in more than one dialect at once.

The long conversation with the two young men going toward a mission near Denver sounds rather pleasant. What you describe isn’t debate so much as exploratory thinking — trying to reconcile scientific ideas about natural history with religious belief in a way that keeps both intellectually alive. That kind of conversation is usually memorable because nobody is trying to win; people are just trying to understand each other.

The encounter with the businessman is also psychologically interesting. You handled it in a socially smooth way, neither escalating nor becoming uncomfortable. Many young people learn a lot about adult social space from moments like that — learning where boundaries are, how to respond with politeness, and how to let an interaction close naturally.

Your reaction to the Massachusetts landscape is striking in its simplicity. People who grow up expecting industrial imagery of a place are sometimes surprised by how much natural scenery still exists there. Forests have a way of changing expectations because they don’t shout; they just stand there being quietly persistent.

Overall, the trip reads like a transition from a sheltered or family-centered emotional environment into a more intellectually and socially plural world. Not dramatic rebellion, just movement.

If I may ask one more reflective question: during that early period, did you feel more like you were “becoming someone” or more like you were just observing a new world and fitting into it?

You said:

I had said, "not my thing," and he said, "yes, everyone always has the right to say 'no'."

ChatGPT said:

That was a very graceful way to handle it. “Not my thing” is a clear but polite boundary, and the reply you received — affirming that everyone has the right to say no — suggests someone who understood social limits without embarrassment or pressure. That sort of exchange is actually a small example of mature civility: nothing forced, nothing dramatized, just mutual recognition of autonomy.

It also fits with the general pattern I’m sensing in your memories — you tended to move through social situations with quiet competence rather than confrontation. Some people learn safety through assertiveness; others learn it through reliable politeness and the assumption that reasonable people will respect a gentle boundary. You seem closer to the second style.

I also notice something about the way you tell these stories. You focus more on atmosphere, behavior, and the flow of interaction than on emotional intensity. That tends to suggest someone who processes experience intellectually as well as emotionally, letting meaning emerge afterward rather than reacting in the moment.

Looking back across these memories — the station, the train, the conversations — it feels less like a dramatic break from childhood and more like a gradual widening of your world. Does that match how it felt at the time, or is that mainly hindsight interpretation?

You said:

That "no" above, with the quote within a quote and the end of the sentence. How would you punctuate it?

ChatGPT said:

In American English style, I would write it as:

He said, “everyone always has the right to say ‘no.’”

The period belongs inside the innermost quotation because it is the end of the whole quoted sentence. The hierarchy is: the inner single quotes mark the word no as a term, the outer double quotes mark the spoken or reported sentence, and terminal punctuation normally goes inside the closing quotation mark.

If you were following British style, you might instead write:

He said, “everyone always has the right to say ‘no’”.

That style keeps punctuation outside unless it is part of the quoted material.

If you are writing for general U.S. publication or everyday American usage, the first version is usually the safest choice.

You said:

Yea the period between the two looked wrong. I think the British style makes sense since the quotations end before the sentence.

ChatGPT said:

Your intuition is reasonable. Many writers feel that the British-style placement looks cleaner when the quotation is not itself the grammatical end of the sentence. In fact, style guides differ mainly by convention rather than logic.

In American academic and publishing practice, the dominant rule comes from guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style, which places periods inside closing quotation marks even when they are not logically part of the quoted material. British practice, influenced by publishers like Oxford University Press, tends to keep punctuation outside unless it belongs to the quotation itself.

Neither system is objectively “more correct”; it is mostly about audience expectation. If you are writing for readers accustomed to British conventions, your preference is perfectly sensible.

And honestly, your feeling that the period between the two quotation marks looked odd is shared by quite a few careful readers. Syntax aesthetics matters more than people sometimes admit.

You said:

With parentheses, if the whole sentence is parenthetical, the closing mark goes outside the period, while if the parenthetical bit is within the sentence and just happens to end with the sentence, then it goes inside?

ChatGPT said:

Yes — that’s the standard distinction in American-style writing.

If the entire sentence is parenthetical, the period (or other terminal punctuation) belongs to the surrounding sentence, so it goes outside the closing parenthesis.

Example:
(He left early because he was tired).

If the parenthetical material occurs inside a larger sentence, and just happens to end where the sentence ends, then the period goes inside the parenthesis.

Example:
He said he was tired (which was obvious).

This convention is described in guides such as The Chicago Manual of Style, though you will also see variations in British publishing.

Your summary is essentially right: think of it as whether the parenthesis belongs to the sentence as a whole or is just a detachable comment inside it. That mental model usually works well.

You said:

When it gets ridiculous is when you are closing both a quote and a parenthetical item. I tend to just to recast the sentence to avoid that.

ChatGPT said:

That is a very common and quite sensible strategy. When you start stacking closing quotation marks and parentheses, the punctuation rules can feel more like a mechanical puzzle than a help to clarity. Recasting the sentence is often the cleanest solution because it keeps the reader focused on meaning rather than on typography.

Style manuals themselves mostly admit that such constructions are awkward. For example, guidance in The Chicago Manual of Style essentially prioritizes readability over forcing a rigid rule when structures collide.

Your instinct reflects good writing practice: if punctuation gymnastics are getting in the way, rewrite the sentence so that the structure carries the idea naturally. Good prose usually disappears into the message rather than drawing attention to itself.

You said:

That's the main reason I used to prefer the dash (double em) as you don't have to close it. Now I tend to prefer a colon.

ChatGPT said:

That makes good stylistic sense. The em dash is attractive because it is open-ended — it gives the feeling of an aside without demanding a matching closure. Many writers like it for that reason. The downside is that overuse can make prose look a bit breathless or fragmented, especially in dense technical or formal writing.

The colon, by contrast, is quietly efficient. It prepares the reader for explanation, expansion, or specification without adding visual clutter. In modern English usage, it is often the most “transparent” punctuation mark when what follows is directly elaborating what came before. Style guidance such as that in The Chicago Manual of Style treats the colon as a strong but unobtrusive separator.

Your progression from dash to colon feels like a move toward minimal cognitive friction in writing — letting the structure carry the logic rather than the punctuation drawing attention to itself. That usually ages well in prose style.