January 14, 2019:

But let's give the devil, or more accurately the dweezil, his due.

He really did make an effort to foster the activities which mattered to me. For instance he used the copier in his law office to reproduce the magazine I wrote in grammar school. Phillips' Follies — already alliterative! Way to go kid! He saw that I loved to write, and to show off. So he used his material resources to further that ambition. No-one else, not teachers not family, took that interest. Indeed, while my main parental unit carefully preserved the newspaper articles written about my participation in the program she kept not one copy of that grammar school magazine, so that, sadly, I have none today. I think it was satirical and full of puns, much as TriadCity would be decades later.

He supported my interest in the military. My love was for airplanes, I wanted to be a Navy fighter pilot. So we went to airshows, toured aircraft carriers, and once actually went up in a Cessna with an actual Navy fighter pilot, who allowed me to take the controls, perform some incompetent maneuvers, and cause the passengers in the back seat to vomit. It was brilliant.

I can't have been easy. I was extremely guarded. I'd learned early that the adults in my life were inept, so that I tried to ensure that only I had the pertinent information. In practice I made very little attempt to share my ambitions or my feelings with any of them, including Your Honor In Training. To his credit, he did attempt to read the tea-leaves. And he got those two pieces right.

But that was it, the two most obvious bits, because anything else would have required actual insight, which, good luck; and would have required sustained effort, which, good luck.

'Cos that wasn't where he was at. Ultimately my purpose in his life was CV fodder, so that with mission accomplished I was jettisoned without a second thought.