The Long Way Round

I came from a broken home at a young age, which already predisposed me to abuse, and there were always plenty to go around. Our mother was always out working to support us or sleeping a few hours between shifts, and our father was rarely in the picture. So we had babysitters or weird roommates watching us, someone else's kids, not theirs. At some point I guess I figured out that getting attention for misbehaving is just as effective and a lot easier than for behaving. The US educational music scene is wind bands in rural areas. Wind bands are based on US military bands, specifically the Marine Band of John Phillip Sousa (I won the award with his name because I was so good at playing the game). Being a military tradition, the reward for success is corporal punishment and verbal abuse. The reward for failure is corporal punishment, verbal abuse, and an extra helping of both. But for the first time in life I could control the attention I got. I could skip class to practice, get abuse ...