The Average Man

My first post, thread and timeline bundled into one, hooray.

So, I have been working on this timeline for the past few months, and after playing around with the idea, I have decided to move it to this forum and change it up, whilst still keeping the main idea intact.

The idea is not the alternate history of a nations, nor is it contingent on diplomacy or wars, no, this alternate history is describing what would happen if a child lived. Death by sickness and illness have been rampant throughout history, and one of the most common age groups killed by the different diseases was children.

To sum up, this alternate history would look at the development of just one person, not a famous person, nor a politically motivated person, but the average person, as history continues around them, they will grow up, they will change, their emotions shall run wild. This is the alternate history of the average man.
 
We shall begin here....

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The town of Russellville, Alabama. A small, all American town was in one of its most patriotic years its hundred year history, World War Two. Perhaps more specifically, the date is the 14th of January, 1942, only one month following the "date that will live in infamy", the bombing of Pearl Harbour. The initial fear was still with many in the god fearing south, but the fear for a deity was instead replaced with a fear of the so-called "yellow menace", the Japanese. However, the fear was subsiding, and in its place, to fill the void, came extreme xenophobia and patriotism. It was also on this date, a child was born. He was not born to peace, or prosperity, but in a world engulfed in flames, and surrounded by poverty and despair. Perhaps it was lucky that this child was born into a property owning family, but the growing expenses of living was growing and it wouldn't be long before the family would be forced onto the street. Until that time however, the family was at peace.

The newborn, christened Roy Lee Ward after his father, Roy Ward. His mother however, was named Emma Kelly Ward, but both were born, grew up, and lived in the state of Alabama. It was also here in which they got their racist, xenophobic, and segregationist views. Whilst not all the state held to similar beliefs, many rural white folks like the Ward's publicly held the belief that the races should be "separate, but equal", however, their own personal thoughts were far more reactionary. These beliefs were also helped along by their support by the local preachers and Baptist church, and it was this environment where Roy Lee Ward formed his theological and racial views.

However, it would be the Ward's property in which decided the fate of the young newborn. They lived on a corn farm, a plantation in fact, and the house in which they occupied was old, broken down, the paint peeling and the nails rusting. It was in the Autumn in which it happened. The 3 month year old Roy was in his bed, or, more precisely, in his crib. His inquisitive mind, which truly wouldn't stop exploring and discovering until he became an adult, was racing. Since he was born, thousands of electric singles were spreading; sending new information throughout his mind, and discovering was the name of the game. His mind was racing, not with any question of substance or intelligence, but what certain things were, and when he saw a small nail pointing out the floor, he needed to understand it. He crawled out of his enclosure when his mother left the room, and in a few seconds, bacteria entered his body through the cut he received when he touched the pointed nail The bacteria was not just any type however, but Clostridium tetani, the bacteria that causes Tetanus.

The cries of Roy caused his mother to come running into the room, and when she saw the blood on here child, she began to worry. Whilst she didn't know intricet details of diseases, she knew what they were and she knew what they were caused by, so, she began to wonder if her child was infected with any virus. If he was, and because he was at such a young age, any disease could be fatal. The town’s hospital was down the road from the Ward's plantation, and if she hurried, he could be treated whilst the disease was at a premature stage. She rushed out the house. Roy Ward Snr. was busy shipping produce to the town at this time, and as the family had no automobile, Emma Ward ran.
 
Don't really have enough information to sub, but the biography of an unimportant person in an alternate history is interesting... so my eyes are on this.


Also, I'm not sure Australia is where you're from originally or if English is your first language, but if you'd like a spelling and grammar checker (we all need one when writing as swiftly as we do) I'd be happy to assist.

EDIT: Also, welcome to the board!
 
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It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the cold Autumn air was closing in around the running women, Emma Ward. Sprinting down the one mile dirt road, the frightened mother was constantly reassured by her child the he would be okay, constantly blabbering and making noises, however, still crying, but the women did not know if her child had got infected. It seemed like she was overreacting, but it stemmed from fears that she had since her own childhood. She was young, and pneumonia swept through town, infecting many young people. At age 8, she was growing an immunity to some of the more deadly aspects of the virus, but that still left her open to the cotangent. She battled for 4 weeks against the disease, her mother constantly by her side, fearing for her life the way she now fears for Roy's.

She looked down at her son, his white shirt being stained brown from the drying blood. Finally, she reached the front of the hospital, the suns light slowly falling beyond the horizon. Whilst she checked in her son, she felt like she was being mocked. The fact that she was getting her son a check-upon the bases of a cut was ridiculous for many in the institution, but the fear would be a well founded one.

After returning back home from town, Roy Snr. was confused and bewildered that his wife had obviously left with his son, but after discovering the bloodied nail on the floor, he new where they went. Being married for 6 years, Roy learnt about the fears of his wife, especially those surrounding children. "My child's safety" she said "is the most important thing to me". Like many others, he was often confused to the lengths she would go to provide safety to those around her, and this was especially seen following the birth of Roy Jnr. After only a minute of contemplating, the elder Roy rushed off to the hospital to see what was going on.

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When he arrived he found his wife calm, but unmoving. She told him everything that happened, and unsurprisingly to Emma, her husband viewed it as incredibly pointless. A week had passed, and after visiting her son, the nurses delivered frightful, almost horrifying news; Roy Lee Ward was diagnosed with Tetanus. After almost collapsing from hearing the news, she became frightened for her son's life, and only medical treatment could save him now. Roy himself began to get weary and white, as the spasms had begun, and when Roy Snr. began to protest his child receiving medical treatment, favouring prayer much like his father before him, the situation began to look dire. However, it was Emma, who's worst fears became a reality, that saved the young boy. She managed to persuade her husband to allow the doctors and nurses to administer antibiotics and tetanus immunoglobulin shots. Over the following few days, Roy began to get better, despite the spasms still occurring and the pain not going away. The Ward family began to pray harder, and as his situation got better, it reinforced their beliefs that they would eventually pass onto their son.

Finally, after 6 weeks in hospital, the young Roy was released, cleared of any disease, ready to continue the life he once had, and continue to explore the world full of new opportunities.
 
Over the following months, Roy's development was progressing steadily. He began to "speak",or in this case, respond with blabbering sentences, much like any child of his age. By the time his was eight months old, Roy was beginning to crawl, and by his eleventh, he was beginning to walk, but needed support. His development began to slow by his first birthday, and it was only at fifteen months did he begin to even try making word sounds. This came ahead when he started referring to his parents by "dad and mum", and in the time between his sixteenth month on Earth, and his second birthday, Roy Ward's inquisitive mind was working harder that it ever did.

However, despite stimulus for his brain around him in every direction, Roy was often confronted with his parents constant fighting. Despite not understanding them, he recognized the aggressive tone in their voices, and he began to develop a fear of such things. The fights themselves were once-sided; with Roy Snr. verbally attacking his wife who was often weak and withdrawn during and following her husbands barrage of words. What they were about however, was neither of them, but Roy, who was constantly crying, or what his father called "whining", about the teething. His headstrong father didn't try as much as his mother to sooth the pain, wanting nothing to do with children in the first place, but he felt he had an obligation to fill, thus ensuring future conflicts with not only Emma, but Roy Jnr.

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Around the time of his second birthday, Roy was constantly bombarded with religious and social texts, in an attempt by his parents to accept their word. This succeed many times, and by the time of his second birthday, he began to accept their word (despite often not knowing what it was, if he understood it at all) and he began to, perhaps furiously, accept and obey his parents, the only commanding figure in his life up to this point. Roy did not have any close relatives geographically, with his grandparents living in Kansas, and his uncles and aunties living in South Carolina. Thus, Roy's early developmental stage of life was dominated by the will of his parents, and out of them, dominated by his father.

By the time of his second birthday, and following it often, the family began to travel to town more, with Roy picking up words at a incredibly high rate. However, a downside to this was the fact he was picking up racial slurs and cuss words often associated with the racist culture at the time, not only from neighbours, but also average men, women and older children off the street. Racial slurs like "coon", often used to de-humanize and ridicule the black people in the south, entered the young Roy's personal lexicon, and the constant barrage from the southern racist culture would make sure that this young child would grow up into a hate filled white supremacist, segregationist like the people around him.
 
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