I find this scene to be hilarious (note the sarcasm) because nothing Tristepin says is actually accurate!
First of all, you were not "barely older than [Flopin]" when you first met. You were in your mid-to-late teens. That's a full decade older than Flopin is during season 4! Even Yugo and Amalia were already twice his age when you all first crossed paths, and they both had reliable guardians. Amalia had Eva, her bodyguard; and Yugo had Ruel—who, for his many flaws, would never have let his best friend's son get hurt.
Flopin only has Madagaskan. A complete stranger who happens to be his grandfather and a dangerous former assassin.
Second of all, maybe Tristepin already had some experience travelling the world, but season 4 essentially confirmed that Eva, while an experienced fighter, spent her entire life alongside the Sheran Sharms in the Sadida Kingdom. Her entire childhood and early teens she was static in one place. That is the opposite of being an experienced adventurer by the time you met the rest of the gang.
This all ends up as an extremely shoe-horned and contradictory argument that is trying (and failing miserably) to distract us from the fact that ToT was too busy projecting his son leaving for college onto a literal child to actually pay attention to his own canon and realise this is all just plain false.
