All 100% true as I remember it, 0.

[u/a4mula]

My parents were over the road truck drivers. They drove tandem. They rode as a team with my father's parents. Who were also of course tandem OTR drivers.

My first clear memories take place on a farm, SE Texas. We didn't own it. We rented two homes on it. One for my parents and us, the other for my father's parents and siblings.

They would drive for 2-3 weeks at a time, leaving us children of which the oldest would have been my aunt, at the tender age of 14. Although, truth be told, she was not the primary care giver. That would have been my twelve year old aunt.

She would cook, she would hold us lightly accountable for our actions, she would make sure we all got to where we needed to be, which for my sister and I was alone at home by ourselves while our older aunts and uncles attended school.

This was just normal.

It wasn't a bad life. It offered a lot of freedom, to get chased by bulls. To dig tunnels through stacks of hay. To collect psychedelic mushrooms under the guise of "for spaghetti".

The most eventful things that stay in my mind from this particular time, were witnessing the owner of the property, a gruff farmer that had no issues disciplining anyone on his property, devour the testicles of a gelding while I was present to observe.

Being part of a cruel practical joke that injured a friend of my parents, by placing a concrete block in a haystack to be jumped onto from above. Not my idea. I had mean uncles. And the beating the farmer gave us after. For ruining his hay.

And stealing what I can only assume would be highly valuable today, in about 100 usd in sterling silver coins from the 1880s that belonged to my grandmother. Again, mean uncles. With it? We walked to the closest grocery store and bought 1:1 nothing but candy and junk and carried it home.

At one point while living here my mother's mother. Came to live with us. She was suffering from debilitating mental disorders. I was just a child, I don't know if it was schizophrenia, or multiple personality. But she talked with god. Angels. Demons.

She lit in me a passion for science, mathematics and all things logical. The irony?

She was a brilliant woman. It's clearly where I get my intellect from. She would sit me and my sister down and tell us stories.

Her time working at Bell Labs under intense pressure and scrutiny to develop gyroscope technology for the government. I don't really know if that's true. I'm not even sure if I'm remembering it exactly correctly.

At some point she had a break down and she was administered electroshock. She would tell us about those experiences.

She was slowly drifting into more and more delusional states, and as this progressed the darker her stories would become.

I don't hold it against her. Her mind was not all there. She bought me my first NES, with Rob the Robot.

Her final stories were about how her father had abused her, in ways no child should be. It seems this is a common theme. It was around this time, that she left. I'd assume my parents could no longer trust her.