| Summary/Abstract |
I SPENT much of my childhood in Ukraine. The son of an army officer, I moved from garrison to garrison due to my father's promotions. Each time, I had to adjust to a new group of children, and that wasn't always a smooth process. It was one thing if you were put in, say, a fifth-grade class that consisted of boys and girls of the same age from the entire garrison. Everyone would be glad a new kid had joined the class and friendships were normally quick to develop. But what was happening outside school was a different story: kids of all ages would come together in outdoor spaces and form a group with its own established rules and leaders. That was a milieu you needed some effort to adjust to. You had to go through various trials to win the right to be accepted by the gang as one of their own. But if you were accepted as such, you were one hundred percent safe. The gang would never have betrayed you and would always have protected and taken care of you.
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