Early Life
Matthew Freeman spent the first few years of his life growing up with his kind and loving parents. They were of comfortable financial stature, though they were not rich. On the morning of the wedding of a family friend, Matt claimed he was ill (when really what had happened was that he had had a premonition of his parents' death, and did not want to go with them, later regretting not trying to save them from their death) and was left with a neighbour, Rosemary Green, while his parents went. Matt reveals to the disbelieving neighbour the details of an accident in which his parents are killed. Afterwards a police officer arrived and informs them that his parents car has toppled off a bridge and that both his parents are dead. Mrs. Green is sick with shock.
Matt was fostered by his Aunt Gwenda and her partner, Brian, who spent his inheritance on luxuries. They then started to abuse and neglect Matt when the money ran out. His Aunt Gwenda and Uncle Brian were in an abusive relationship. His performance at school suffered accordingly and he soon fell under the influence of a local thug, Kelvin Johnson, who encouraged him to take to stealing, truancy, vandalism, smoking and petty crime. According to Matt, he started smoking at the age of twelve, and stole things from local shops.
Read more about this topic: Matt Freeman (Power Of Five)
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)