I live in a very small town in the Mid-west. It’s one of those places where everybody knows everybody else’s business. Pretty much everybody here knows I’m adopted. Strangely enough, they all seem to think it was a good match, at least between me and my b-dad.

I read something written by an adoptive parent last week about how she felt that enviroment made the genes of adopted children express themselves differently than they would if the child was raised by b-parents. It made me snicker. Then wonder.

It came to me as so many of these things in life do, completely from left field.

My trashy neighbor, who seems to own the world’s most extensive collection of junky old Toyota pick-ups, must be beginning to construct a building to hold his treasures. From my living room window you can see little orange flags laid out for a foundation. This building is less than welcome by me, but’s that’s a different story. The flags got me thinking about something.

My b-dad owns a grocery store in my little town. He built it in 1967. It was the first supermarket in town. He did well with it, much to the displeasure of a chain store that had a building on the town square. My b-dad got word that the chain w=store was considering building a new store. They were looking at a piece of land just south of our store.

One day when Dad came home for lunch, funny how Dad’s used to come home for lunch-a more simple time, I guess, he loaded up me and Mom in the store truck. In the truck he had a bundle of thoser orange flags and the blueprints from our house. We went out to the peice of land that the chain store was considering buying, Dad had purchased an option on the land that morning. Dad, Mom and I put the flags around the property, an entrance from the highway, parking lot, and a big ass building were marked out.

Then Dad got out the house plans, set them on the hood of the truck. He called us over and pointed at the flags, gesturing like this would be here and that would be there. Mom and I thought he had lost his mind, we had just built that house, and he was talking about a grocery store.

We didn’t know that the chain store manager drove by the lot we were standing on everyday on his way back from his lunch hour. The chain store manager didn’t know that we were looking at house blueprints.

Plans for the new chain store came to an end.

That sounds exactly like something I would do. Nature or nurture? I wonder.

I also wonder if it was wrong of me to move a couple of my neighbors little flags about six inches?