Due to the nature of an orphanage involving many children and few caregivers, my early life functioned largely on a schedule. Waking up, free time, going to school, eating, nap breaks, TV time, baths; all of it was measured in hours. So, despite my Pokemon Masters appearance referencing Anne's 'It's a Hard-Knock Life' (fuck DeNA for that, by the way, even if it did make me laugh out loud once I recognized what my 'Hard Knocks' node was meant to be referencing), I'd more so say that the orphanage was structured and monotonous rather than any sort of cruel and strenuous.

Much like most children's experience with school, though, it wasn't the structure itself that made everything difficult; it was the other children. I wasn't a very social type. I preferred to try and look for any small rat or bug Pokemon around the orphanage to watch rather than talk to other children. When other children approached me first, I suppose that I came across as stand-offish, with short and curt responses. I wasn't trying to be mean, but I always had a difficult time getting along with the other children.

Keeping to myself wasn't enough to stay out of fights, though. There was an unspoken policy amongst the kids that, if two kids got into a physical fight when there were no caregivers around, everyone else had to step in to try and break the fight up until one came. And, obviously, no kid was stupid enough to start a fistfight with an adult around. So, all of us having to step in and pry whoever the offenders of the day were was a regular occurance, which sometimes meant that one or multiple of us would be dragged into the fight. All of us, more or less, could fight because of this; scrappy, fighty orphan kids, the lot of us. I was always sort of a string bean (read: taller than most and skinny), so I was one of the most nimble of us, as well.

And, yes, fistfights broke out as often as I'm making it sound. Over stupid things like the remote at TV time, and some of the kids there were just plain bullies, too, beating up on the smaller and weaker of us, or the ones who were easy targets to make fun of. Bullying which I wasn't in on, but I didn't bother to step in and stop, either. Again, I kept to myself, and I wasn't looking to draw attention to myself as the next target.