substitute
New member
- Joined
- May 27, 2007
- Messages
- 4,601
- MBTI Type
- ENTP
Simple answer is that I wasn't raised. I was left to my own devices 99% of the time to raise myself, with the aid of medieval literature, which was all there was to read - the only other option being Jehovah's Witness literature, which interested me not in the slightest. Well, there was also an element of wanting to annoy my dad in my choice of literature.
Lived right in the middle of nowhere, very isolated but in a large family of slightly odd people. Mum barely acknowledged my existence (and I was happy with it that way) and Dad worked away a lot of the time, returning occasionally to beat the living shit out of me and then leave again after calling me the devil's child and all that shite, and telling me that great things were expected of me because I was a child of our family (which happens to be a very old, minor (but once very major) aristocratic family in Northern France) and that I had a duty to see that my life brought honour to the family. Which was a bit odd, considering that his life didn't exactly do that or make it at all easy for the rest of us to.
By the time I was about 8 or 9 I came to an unspoken arrangement with my parents, whereby I was strangely exempt from just about anything I didn't want to take part in (which was most of what they did), and I spent most of my time cycling long distances either alone or with my brother, exploring and often staying away overnight, camping in barns or sleeping in ancient churches in the countryside of France and England. We used to sometimes go down to the rivers and 'borrow' dinghies/rowboats and just take ourselves off for miles, even days sometimes, along the river. When we came back, Dad was still away and Mom never even noticed we'd been gone, or if she had, she wasn't bothered.
But all in all I'd say the biggest influences on me as a kid were medieval literature and my brother (6 years older than me), who actually taught me Latin, Middle English, Old French and Anglo-Saxon, so I could read the originals. He learned Latin at school and AS/MS/OF from our uncle, a professor of medieval studies. So most of my values, ideals and sense of duty/community/hierarchy etc come straight from the middle ages. And it annoys me that Hollywood has stereotyped the middle ages to such an extent, based on nonsense, that when I say that, 90% of people haven't a clue what that actually means, and instead think I mean that I believe in women being chained to the sink and despotic monarchies and blah blah blah...
Lived right in the middle of nowhere, very isolated but in a large family of slightly odd people. Mum barely acknowledged my existence (and I was happy with it that way) and Dad worked away a lot of the time, returning occasionally to beat the living shit out of me and then leave again after calling me the devil's child and all that shite, and telling me that great things were expected of me because I was a child of our family (which happens to be a very old, minor (but once very major) aristocratic family in Northern France) and that I had a duty to see that my life brought honour to the family. Which was a bit odd, considering that his life didn't exactly do that or make it at all easy for the rest of us to.
By the time I was about 8 or 9 I came to an unspoken arrangement with my parents, whereby I was strangely exempt from just about anything I didn't want to take part in (which was most of what they did), and I spent most of my time cycling long distances either alone or with my brother, exploring and often staying away overnight, camping in barns or sleeping in ancient churches in the countryside of France and England. We used to sometimes go down to the rivers and 'borrow' dinghies/rowboats and just take ourselves off for miles, even days sometimes, along the river. When we came back, Dad was still away and Mom never even noticed we'd been gone, or if she had, she wasn't bothered.
But all in all I'd say the biggest influences on me as a kid were medieval literature and my brother (6 years older than me), who actually taught me Latin, Middle English, Old French and Anglo-Saxon, so I could read the originals. He learned Latin at school and AS/MS/OF from our uncle, a professor of medieval studies. So most of my values, ideals and sense of duty/community/hierarchy etc come straight from the middle ages. And it annoys me that Hollywood has stereotyped the middle ages to such an extent, based on nonsense, that when I say that, 90% of people haven't a clue what that actually means, and instead think I mean that I believe in women being chained to the sink and despotic monarchies and blah blah blah...
