Earth

"Douglas! Get up, sweetie. You have to feed the chickens before you go off to school!"
My mother, always on schedule – "Feed the chickens before they fight, milk the cows before they
sour, quit playing with the horses tails before they..." Well, you get the picture.

I hated living on the farm. I was 8 years old and lived miles from everywhere, and everyone. I had
no friends outside of school except for the farm hands my mother hired, and most of them didn't even speak English..

The day started like all the others. I'd drag myself out of bed and haul myself outside into the
bitter cold, dark morning and spread chicken feed all over the ground.
These chickens made me so mad, with their noise and pungent smell. Sometimes I'd try to peg them in the head with the feed.
My aim wasn't very good. Like I said, I was 8.

School started around 8:00am, or whenever I decided to show up. The teachers just figured I was
always late because of farm work, while - in reality - I just hung out by the stream just down
the road from the school.

I was practicing my feed throwing skills by trying to skip stones down the flowing stream when a piercing chill ran down the back of my neck. For some reason, I felt like my world had ended.
I felt light headed and queasy, like I was going to get sick.
I headed off to school right away, figuring, what better place to get sick than at school, right?

I had just walked into my classroom, the usual 15 minutes late, when the principle knocked on the
classroom door.

I could sense that something wasn't right as my teacher talked with the principal in the hallway.I could almost feel her pain and sorrow; like it was directed at me. She was crying for me.

The teacher opened the classroom door and motioned for me to come out and have a word with the principle.
"Oh, great." I thought. Maybe they found out about my meandering at the stream and want to
confront me.

This was the day I found out my mother was killed in the explosion.

Mother; my mother was my last living relative ever since my father and older brother were killed
in a car accident 2 years ago. Now I was alone on this planet.

The police brought me down to the station where they told me about how the furnace had blown up; about mom being in the kitchen when the gas valve went. About how she never saw her end coming.
I stared at the officer for an eternity before an older man came in the door. A tall and slender man with a worn face,
wearing an out dated plaid suit and an off color cream hat.
He was out of place.
"It's seems that your only living relative is your uncle Jeff, here." The officer introduced the man
as my uncle, but my parents were both single children. Mom told me several times when she'd reminisce about her childhood.

The old man showed the officer some papers and turned to me.
"I'll raise you as you were my own." he said. His hand on my shoulder gave me a sudden comfort
from the pain and sadness in my stomach.

After we left the police station we walked along the shoulder of the road toward the outer city limits.The man started to ask me some odd questions: "Could you ever sense danger?", and "Have I ever been able to predict the future right before it happened?"
He kept prodding on the questions about my mothers' death and the house exploding; like he was extremely fascinated with gore.

"Could you feel your mother die?" He asked it - point blank - as if asking what flavor ice cream I wanted. I was shocked.
The truth of the matter was that I didn't remember feeling anything; not until he reminded me about feeling sick.

The man knelt in front of me. "You feel a lot of fear right now, don't you?"
I didn't have a clue as to what this guy was getting at. It was like he was testing me, or trying
to tell me something else. I just stood there, listening, but it was like he didn't even need me to answer.
"Come with me, and I will show you the ways of the Force. How to use your fear and anger to make you strong and
get you the things you want."
At the time, I had no idea what a 'Force' was, but the offer of fortune was too great to resist.

I soon learned that his real name was Darth Klo'ek. When I became his apprentice I received the name, 'Darth Dragger'.
As his student I learned about the Force, about space travel, about other planets, about the Sith, and the unending war with the wretched Jedi.