I was just a standard tyke until I was 4. Then my mom moved out, and another woman with six kids of her own moved in. I felt like they were intruding on 'my' turf, and I rebelled. It didn't help that they were all kinda stupid and mean. From 5 to 12 I lived with my mom, and I was generally a 'good boy' then, as day-to-day survival was really my main concern -- my mom kept marrying vicious drunks who'd beat her nigh to death. One hit me once; I waited until he was sober the next day then walked up to him with a butcher knife in hand and said something along the lines of, 'If you ever EVER hit me again, the next time you pass out, you won't wake up.' I was serious, he saw it in my eyes, and he never hit me again.

At 12, my mom died, and I went to live with my grandma, after a lengthy pseudo-fight between one sister, my brother, and my grandma over who'd 'get me'. My grandma couldn't really handle me. I was, and am, a generally kind person, but school had begun to bore me, so I just stopped going, and grandma called the child services folks on me. As I was 16 by then, they couldn't get me for truancy, so they got me for 'incorrigible'. I went to juvie for a few months, then to a foster family until I was 17, when I joined the Army.

So, I was kinda all over. I had spans of years where I was a pretty darn good boy, I had my survive-whatever-it-takes years, and then I had my rebellious years, though I was never a mean person and no girls ever thought of me as 'the bad boy type' or anything. Overall, I'd say I was pretty good though.