Part 2: Growing Up
15. How would you describe your childhood in general?
Good. Healthy. Mmm. Growing up in the Order can be difficult, but that's true for growing up anywhere. Puberty, after all, is a misery for all sentient beings. And in the Order, a child has high standards placed on them, yes, but you always have food to eat, and a warm place to sleep, and caretakers that truly believe you are precious. You have friends to play with and you're educated and you're given the opportunity to succeed, to grow into a mature and compassionate adult.
Many children in the galaxy don't have that luxury. Many grow up as slaves, or are treated as worthless. They suffer and die before they even make it to their tenth nameday. So. For all the talk out there that the Jedi are awful to children, it's good to remember how truly fortunate children brought into the Order are.
16. What is your earliest memory?
Hard to say. Memories from childhood tend to have interference from the stories we hear and the stories we write as adults. But the one that I'm most sure of took place in one of the gardens at the Temple on Coruscant. I was very young, maybe three or four, and the Knight who took care of my Clan took us out for a walk, as is rather normal. When you're older, you understand that it's a precursor active meditation, but when you're a child, you don't know that.
But, in any case, there we are, in one of the gardens. I remember hearing the water from a fountain. And I remember the moment where – I don't know how to explain it, exactly. The moment where she showed us how to listen. To see. Even for a Miraluka child, who'd been seeing with the Force, it was different. There were so many – threads. Everything to everything else. It was absolutely beautiful.
17. How much schooling have you had?
A lot. Probably more than I'd like to admit. I was stationed at the Temple for nearly the whole time I was a Padawan, and I had structured classes and study periods. So, let's see. There was the education I received as an Initiate. Basics, you know, about the Force, about our bodies, about fighting, about the things that non-Jedi school children learn, all of that. Then I was apprenticed to Master Iziah Surth, who was a Scholar at the temple. I was eleven, he was in his sixties. I learned from him, and from my teachers who were Healers and Sentinels trained in medicine.
That continued, practically full time, until I was Knighted at twenty-five. Then I had an almost post-apprenticeship apprenticeship, where my first mission was with an older Healer. That was three years. And every day, I continue to learn, to study, about my field, about my body, about my connection with the Force. So, I suppose, I've had about forty-four years of schooling now.
18. Did you enjoy school?
Yes, I always did. A few of the things I learned, I thought were silly when I was learning them (poetry, for one), but I appreciate the great amount of knowledge my teachers offered me as a gift. If I have absorbed just a fraction of that, I will consider myself very fortunate.
19. Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities?
A mix, really. I learned a lot of things from the Order, but also from outside of it as well. Sometimes Healers forget that there's a lot you can do without the Force. Non-Jedi doctors have the ability to heal, to encourage life, to end suffering, all without a strong connection to the Force. When I was in my upper teen years, I spent a lot of time working with non-Jedi who didn't have the financial backing of a Council, and I learned a lot of very ingenious ways of treating a lot of people with very few resources.
20. While growing up, did you have any role models? If so, describe them.
I did. A lot, really. My teachers at the Temple, of course. All of them, amazingly intelligent and educated sentient beings. My Master, of course. There was also a doctor, a fem. She was a very resourceful person. Her name was – oh, Erlan, I think? Surname. Everyone knew her as Doc Tu. Brave. Clever. She was the most fearless person I ever met. She was one of the non-Jedi that educated me and a few other young students. She, ah, she died, when I was eighteen, part of the job. There were so many people at her service, I even snuck out of classes for it. Master Surth punished me, of course, but it was some terribly mild chore.
21. While growing up, how did you get along with the other members of your family?
I suppose Master Surth was the closest thing I had to family, outside of my crechemates. He and I – didn't always see eye to, hah, eye. He's a very wise Jedi, a very intelligent man. Possibly the most intelligent man I know, almost frighteningly so. But his view of the universe is so far removed, so long sighted, that we never could really talk to each other. I know he never really understood me, and I never really understood him, because just how we approach things is so very different. I'd like to believe it was a good learning experience for both of us, I know it was for me, but I often have a hard time reading my Master.
I know he's fond of me, like a son sometimes. I know he protects me, has helped me with a few little projects that I really shouldn't have been given so much room on. I know he's probably doing the same for Scylas at the moment. But we've never had that bond that some Masters and their students share.
22. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a Jedi Knight, and fight evil throughout the galaxy. Good and evil, and the fight between them, is a lot more simple for a child, even one growing up in the Temple.
23. As a child, what were your favourite activities?
Mm. I enjoyed reading a lot. Working in the gardens. Lightsaber, training, of course. I picked up and gave my fair share of minor burns with that. I liked a lot of running and jumping and chasing as children do. Sport. Swimming, of course, exploring the grounds, things like that.
24. As a child, what kinds of personality traits did you display?
Stubborn. I was a very, very stubborn child. I suppose I'm still a stubborn adult. I was loud. I laughed a lot, even when it'd get me a few dirty looks from my teachers. A lot of energy. I learned to – hide it, I guess? There's this moment for a lot of Jedi children, I think, were we learn to hide our feelings from our teachers and peers and not really deal with them. I guess that's part of growing up for any child, though.
When I was a teenager, I was a pain, as teenagers often are. I knew better than my masters, I sometimes was angry, hormones do that. Even for Jedi. We're taught how to behave, and we do, but teenagers are teenagers everywhere, even if it's more subtle.
For example, I had a bit of a hard time adjusting to being stuck at the Temple for my Padawan years. My oldest friend, Kren, he got assigned to a Knight that took missions away from the Temple. He came to me, about half a year after I'd been assigned to Surth, and he said something – oh, what did he say? “You know, Sirdio, we can't all go out and be heroes. Some of us just have to stay behind and fight the good fight”.
Oh, I broke his nose. It was a good swing. We both got in so much trouble; I don't think I've ever been more exhausted in my life. Woken up early, chores until we dropped into bed. I was eleven years old, and my back ached.
I tell Kren now that it was still worth it. He agrees because, frankly, he was an ass.
25. As a child, were you popular? Who were your friends, and what were they like?
I suppose. I mean, I wasn't a quiet child. And we all knew each other. I had a lot of friends, ah, mostly agemates. We grew up together, studied together, worked together. Most of them are dead. I do keep in contact with those few who are alive: one in the MediCorps, a few who left before being Knighted, a couple Knights, but like I said, many of my age group have already gone on to be one with the Force.
26. When and with whom was your first kiss?
Friend of mine, Herapa. She was, well, she was a she. Year older than me. I was probably, oh, twelve or so, and we're in one of the gardens in the Temple, and she turns to me and asks if I've kissed anyone before. And I tell her, no, the idea sounds a bit silly, where do you put your nose, where do you put your teeth, where do you put your tongue? So she leans over and puts her open mouth on mine and it was of the most awkward things either of us have experienced.
We gave up because we were both laughing so hard. Turns out, she prefered fems and I prefered males, so it really was doomed to be awkward no matter what.
Sometimes, when she comes back to the Temple – she's a diplomat, you see – I fake a terribly open mouthed yawn for her when we pass each other. She's got a wonderful pazaak face, but she still smiles each time.
27. Are you a virgin? If not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity?
No, I'm not. Not for – well, a very long time. And let me rephrase all that: I don't consider it a loss. It's hard to lose a lack. When I learned maths, I didn't lose my lack of knowledge. I learned. In the same way, when I started being sexually active, I didn't lose anything. I gained experience. And the idea that inexperience is somehow precious or –or pure is frankly just silly. Virginity is something you worry about when you place a – a monetary value on someone's body. It's that thing slave owners look for in their slaves, and sometimes we even call that blasted arrangement marriage and make the people we sell into it more expensive.
Virginity is about the -- the transfer of goods, of living sentient beings, from one person to another. It's about treating people's bodies as goods that are worth more because they have yet to be touched. And I consider it dehumanizing.
So. I won't be answering that question because I don't like how it was asked.
28 is skipped because it's redundant for the next section.
