Starting life with no connections, no home-base, little family and zero resources, I instinctively leaned to scavenge whatever information and items that might be useful. Children and animals are remarkably resourceful that way. Whether it was a wistful hint that I wished I had a home or the thrilling discovery that I could escape high school, where I was bored and frightened into fugue states and obsessive writing of bad poetry, and proceed directly to an institution of higher (I hoped) learning. I taught myself to seize the moment, shape it, and act on it quickly and relentlessly.

To an observer in space I might have looked passive, reacting rather than acting; "going with the flow", but I was choosing carefully from the dumpster bin before me. Offered a full scholarship to a rather well-thought-of private college, I turned it down when the offer included supervision by the offerer, a particularly insistent counselor who was "studying" me for his own advanced degree. I knew which meat was poisoned. Unless it involved emotions. That was a separate thread entirely.