I’ve often said that I lived like I was in a dystopia as a kid. Here’s why I say that.

As early as kindergarten, I was getting myself up in the morning to go to school. My mom didn’t do this. She never got up before 11AM. My dad had already gone to work — he usually left at 5AM when he had a job.

I’d make my own breakfast if there was anything to eat. Often there was not.

Sometimes, I didn’t have any lunch money so I didn’t eat lunch. Later this got better after my grandparents started helping, but that was still several years away at that time.

I didn’t have a real alarm clock so I had to guess when to get up. Perhaps this is why I can rouse myself nearly whenever I want to now within a few minutes. One time though I woke up at midnight, scrounged some breakfast together and got fully ready before I realized it wasn’t actually 6AM (when I usually got up).

And usually in the morning I’d get on the bus at around 7 AM for the hour and a half ride to school, and get home around 4:30 PM or so. That ride was pure torture. Cold in the winter, torridly hot and humid in the summer and I was beset by bullies for many of those years.

When I look back at a five-year-old getting himself up and ready for school with no assistance, I am amazed. How did I do that?

I raised myself in a very real sense. No one was paying any attention to what I was doing for the most part. No one helped me very much. No one woke me up in the morning or even noticed when I got home from school, even as a five-year-old.

I taught myself to read. I taught myself to tell time. I taught myself to tie my own shoes. I taught myself to identify animals and to find things I could eat outside (relatively plentiful in Florida, thankfully). I taught myself how to use the computer (my dad wasn’t patient enough to teach me). I did things no kid should have to do, ever, and I didn’t even know it. They were just things I had to do.

When I say I was raised in a dystopia, that is why. (I misspelled “dystopia” and the Firefox autocorrect wanted to correct it to “topiary.” No, I was not raised in a hedge, thank you.)