The plan worked well. No one wanted to be outdone by a brother, especially a little brother. And if a little brother could outshine a big brother, even just once in awhile, that was a real feather in the little one's cap.
Oh, yes! There was hurry and there was pressure. But it didn't seem to get us down as it does some people today. We had no psychologists in those days to tell us that pressures would warp a kid's brain. We didn't know that competition and hurry would drive us crazy until these educated people told us about it.
So we lived hard, we worked hard, and we played hard. Then we were able to go to bed and sleep hard. Never in my life did I ever hear Mama or Papa say, "I didn't sleep well last night, because I felt tense and worried."
There was really nothing to worry about like there is today. They didn't worry that we kids might go away from home and get into trouble. We didn't have to leave home to get into trouble. We kids made our own trouble right at home. We had a lot of fun doing a lot of different things. Most of our troubles were brought on accidentally, we didn't deliberately plan them.
There was no worry about the family losing anything, we had nothing to lose. No one would steal from us because no one wanted what we had. So, whatever pressures we might encounter during the day were dispelled during a night of welcome rest.
In the cotton patch Mama and Papa encouraged us to see who could pick 100 bolls first. The first one to pick his 100 bolls would call out, "hundred." Then each of the others would call out the number of bolls they had picked during the same time.
This competition got more bales of cotton to the gin in a shorter period of time. But, as in all activities where kids are involved, we sometimes had little disagreements.
I had this thing of humming or singing a song while I picked cotton and counted my bolls. I found that the mental work I was doing was relaxing and it allowed my hands to do their work faster. And now, 65 years later, I learn that I was doing something a little bit kin to what they call Yoga.
At any rate, it really worked for me. I could pick cotton faster than a brother or two who were older than I was. Now, I didn't necessarily use my system in order to get more of the family cotton picked. I used it mainly just to beat my older brothers picking cotton, and that not for very long at a time.
But my little scheme backfired on me. One of those brothers couldn't stand to be outdone by a younger brother. He told Mama and Papa that I was lying and cheating, because he knew I couldn't count bolls while I sang a song. But he was wrong. I could. Anyway, nothing I could say would make him believe me. I began to become an outcast among some of my brothers early in life. I believe there were times when some of them would have been glad to "sell me into slavery" as Joseph's brothers did him.