View source for LongestRoad Growing up was difficult

Much of my life has been shaped by the necessity of self-reliance.  It's not that I think I can't rely on anyone for anything.  Quite the opposite, I rather enjoy allowing other people to handle the day to day runnings of Struquin's household, but I've found that in the end, I have to take care of myself.

Where does this come from?  Well, let me tell you a little bit about my parents.  My mother, Vaala was beautiful but not terribly intelligent.  She did have a way with people, which is probably where I got it, but beyond that she had a talent with all living things.  With little apparent effort, she could grow pretty much any plant, and befriend almost any animal.  Meant we had a strange home, always full of living things.  My Dad Therin was young by elven standards, and utterly smitten with my mother, largely because of her talents, though I'm sure her physical beauty was also part of it.

They were happy together, or at least as much so as is possible for people in their states.  They tended to partake of a lot of mind altering substances, mostly herbal in nature.  A tendancy that I'm pretty sure is how they wound up with me, if somewhat indirectly.  They were too far out of their gourds on drugs to be able to use some kind of preventative device or spell.  So no, I'm not bitter about it, since without that behavior, I wouldn't exist, but it did impact my upbringing rather pointedly.

You see, after I was born, they continued with their accustomed ways, partaking in whatever pleased them, even while trying to take care of me.  That meant that from a very early age, I was taking care of myself as almost as much as they were taking care of me.  It's a harsh lesson for a child to have to learn independance while they're still sleeping in a cradle.

My parents would be in their room, in the living room, or pretty much anywhere in the apartment they could be sprawled out comfortably, in some sort of herbal haze, and I'd waddle into the kitchen and find food for myself.  That was one nice thing about Mom's talent.  Meant there was always some kind of food around the house, even if it had to be picked out of a pot.

Very early on, I would escape from my crib, waddle in to the kitchen, and forage for food.  When my parents were together enough to notice me, they'd do what they could to take care of me, but as often as not, I'd be on my own.  That's more or less how I grew up until I was old enough to venture from the apartment on my own.

When I started doing that, my world opened up.  I can't have been more than about 6 when I was wandering about on my own.  My larcenous activities started not long after that.  Of course, it was also more or less when I started meeting people my own age.  The other kids in my neighborhood my age were generally better cared for than I was, and I was a little on the small side, but on the other hand, I was also very outgoing and could talk circles around most of them, even at that age.  Of course, at that age, my chattiness was also responsible for my getting a pounding more than once.

On the other hand, I managed to get myself back out of trouble more than once by lifting sweets from one of the local shops and passing them out among the gang.  It wasn't that I had particularly quick hands, I just knew how to act when nobody was looking, and how to talk to people and make them all think I was a part of some other group who inevitably wound up paying for what I had taken.  It worked pretty well for a while.

Then I got taken to school.  Quite literally.  The city I grew up in had a pretty solid public school system, which all children of age were required to attend.  I hadn't the foggiest idea such a thing existed, and apparently neither did my parents, even in their more lucid moments, but the guards showed up and informed us one evening that the session I was enrolled in would begin the following week, and handed my dazed parents a list of supplies I would need before then.  Well, my parents were happy to try to take me out to get the supplies, but as usual they found the task basically impossible to focus on, and wound up back home with only some of the supplies and a few things they decided to get for themselves.

Of course, I was annoyed by their inability to do anything like getting some basic school books, quills, ink, and such, but I was also horrified by the possibility of showing up at school without all of the supplies I needed, and having the other kids laugh at me again.  So, I went out on my own and acquired the rest of the things I'd need.  I had a bit of help reading the list, since I could read a few basic words, but not much more than that.  Have you ever noticed that adults are happy to do things for "helpless" children?  It's a fact I took advantage of quite a bit when I was little.

School was little better than home life.  Most days I'd have to put together my own breakfast and lunch, get to school on time, and then find or make dinner for myself, and do whatever school work I had that night before getting to bed on my own.  I did occasionally have help from my parents, but not often, and the couple of times they made my lunches, I wound up wishing I'd been allowed to make them myself.  Classes were fine, and the teachers were more attentive than my parents, but they also managed to confuse my life some more.

Most of my classmates had parents who would assist them in various ways, and my situation with my parents seemed to be more or less unique.  The result was that my teachers didn't always understand how my life worked, and would sometimes insist that I get help from my parents on various projects, which was more or less impossible.

My social life grew rather oddly as well.  I wound up in a smallish gang of kids my own age.  Mostly we were a pack of miscreants who performed acts of minor vandalism and theft.  Guess which I did more of?  And of course, the reason for the theft was mostly to get small items that we desired.  A bit of candy.  A shiny statuette.  A small knife.  Over the couple of years I spent with the gang, I never stole anything worth more than a few gold coins, but I was prolific, and my ability to always talk us back out of trouble when the authorities got involved is why the gang kept me around.  I was never the leader, since I continued to be smaller than my classmates, and gangs of that age are ruled by muscle, not brains, but I was always kept close and as a result I received fewer poundings than I would have otherwise.

That's not to say I didn't get a beating from time to time.  Other gangs would occasionally find me alone and decide I was an easy target.  I proved them wrong on that count at least, and usually gave back as much punishment as I got, but it was also usually spread out among four or five other kids, rather than concentrated on one.  It meant that when I wasn't with my gang, I got very good at being inconspicuous.  And that's probably what ended that phase of my life.