User blog:Art Vandeleigh/Tales of my youth: Volume I

Stealing Grapes from a Winery
For the most part, I was a mild-mannered boy growing up. Some days however, I'd give in to my meddlesome nature and organize some chaos. This was one such time.

When I was 11 years old me and two of my friends, named Varus and Felix, were itching to get out of school (Back then all schools were military boarding schools.) It had been about five months since we last left the walls of that academy. We had decided on breaking out during military exercise one day. We waited until the Fugere Hostes exercise (Pretty much just running through a forest, first one to make it out 'wins', although I forgot exactly what we won.) and booked it. We roamed the countryside for a few hours then found an overturned wagon. Felix had the bright idea to take off our sashes, and we rested in the wagon all night. Come morning, and we continue to wander. We didn't have a plan, but we saw a winery and we all looked at each other. We all knew what we were thinking.

We were hungry. I hopped the fence, picked as many grapes as my little arms could carry, and ran back, put them in a makeshift pouch made from Varus' sash, and repeat the process until we had enough grapes. We decided it was time to go back after that, but before we did we wanted to cut through a forest on the way back. What we didn't know was that the forest was home to Greek bandits. With Sun at our crown and eventually at our backs, we frolicked through the forest. A man with a Kopis (sword) saw us and walked up. He spoke Greek. I was still learning, but Felix was Greek, so they had a short conversation and the man pointed us out of the forest. I asked Felix what they talked about, and I'll never forget what he said.

"He said he had grapes stolen from his vineyard and that he's had enough of the bandits living in these woods."

Meeting Crassus for the First Time
So I was a young man at 22, a year away from graduating from the military academy I had been sent to in Greece. At the time there was a civil war going on: Sulla's War. To make a long story short an old bastard named Sulla wanted to be dictator for life, the senate declined, he raised legions, civil war time.

Crassus was 14 years older than me, 38. Crassus was already Sulla's right hand in Greece, he took a large portion of the fighting on. Being the troubled youth I was, I joined a group of students who were trying to brew their own wine (wine was strictly forbidden outside of getting one cup on special holidays). It actually went very well, the eggheads running the actual operation made a good batch.

But it was tiresome, expensive, and we had made five terrible batches beforehand. My hand in the group was as a guard/lookout. We ran it in the basement at night, but we all had to get at least a few hours of sleep always so our instructors wouldn't suspect we were up to something in the morning.

I got together a lot of other guards, not all, but a lot, and we decided on simply buying wine and smuggling it in. This was just as hard, if not harder, mind you. There were a lot of children of prominent Romans in that school, so it was closely guarded. After a few days of observation, we had found a gap in the guard cycles, and we seized it. Every night for a week, we looked for people willing to sell us wine on the down-low.

Eventually, we found Crassus.

Although he was involved in the military, Crassus was something of an eager investor, and he had bought a lot of vineyards nearby as he was fighting in the war. We arranged a few meetings, we were willing to pay a lot of money for some wine. Like way more than is socially acceptable, even back then. Crassus and three of our representatives decided on a sit-down of to negotiate terms. I was one of them. There wasn't much to say about the actual meeting, but when I saw Crassus years later, I thought I recognized him from somewhere, but I didn't know for sure. Eventually, I remembered. Unfortunately it was after the last time I saw him, but I know it was Crassus.

My closest political ally first met me to sell students in my school wine.

My First Hunting Trip
In my school, you could go on a hunt as young as 12, and participate in the hunt itself as young as 14. Needless to say, I went on a trip when I was 14. We had some instructors take us into a faraway wood in the mountains. We took with us only short-bows, spears, and a two day's rations each. We were meant to be out there for a week. A lot of this story is us just walking through the forest and stumbling upon bunnies. Eventually, on the sixth day, me, Varus, and I can't remember his name, but it started with A, went on a small patrol outside the encampment at night. Because A was 18 we could leave with him. So spears in hand, we went for a pleasant stroll at night. We talked about all manner of things, our education, friends, girls, everything young rapscallions like ourselves would be interested in.

We wound up getting lost in conversation, and then lost for real. We had no idea where we were. A was desperate to get us back because he was entrusted with our safety, and he'd be put in a sling if he didn't return us by morning. We started getting scared, and decided to climb the mountain to see where we were. We went up and got a good view of our surroundings. We knew that we'd pass out had we tried to go back this late, so we slept atop that mountain- Well, everyone but A didn't sleep, he was scared as shit of getting his ass beat by the instructors.

We woke up just before sun rose, and saw the fire of the main camp in the wilderness. When I say we raced down that mountain, we tore it up. There was a boulder in our way, and we just shoved it down the mountain. Probably not the smartest idea, because we heard a tree cracking. We descended to the bottom, and what we saw changed my life forever.

The boulder rolled over a boar. Bones, blood and bits all over the ground, it was disgusting. Entirely inedible too. Only thing we took was half a tusk. The other half was ground into powder. After puking, we ran all the way to camp. The rest of the trip was uneventful, as long as you exclude the beating A took for failing to return us on time. Overall, even though I don't like hunting, I still remember this story very well.

Guess the saying is true- You never do forget your first.