|
xxxxxThe fourth child in a sprawling New-York-Irish family. Kyle had a good home life, by and large. A /loud/ home life; lots of arguments, lots of shouting, but at the end of the day they were all still /family/ and could jump from yelling at each other at the top of their voices to fiercely defending each other if someone else did the same.
Growing up with an abundance of exuberant siblings and exuberant extended-family around, Kyle learned from young to be /assertive/ if he wanted to be heard. He was not always great at knowing when was appropriate to be assertive -- or where the line was between assertive and aggressive, leading to intermittent but recurring trouble with picking fights at school. Outside of the occasional suspensions, he was a thoroughly mediocre student. Lots of C's, occasional B's, occasional D's. In sports he excelled, though, football in the fall, swimming through winter, baseball when spring came around. His life outside of classes and sports was active; Boy Scouts and many hours volunteering and a busy social life.
It was not a surprise to his thoroughly working-class family that he elected not to go to college; not many of them had, his father a firefighter, his mother a beautician. Instead he tested for and enrolled in the police academy, and in this as in the rest of his educational career he was mostly mediocre. On the job, though, he excelled, through hard work and dedication more than anything else.
He married young, twenty, his high school sweetheart. The sweetheart part did not /last/, leaving him five years later with a divorce that was not /bitter/ but not particularly pleasant either, and two small children to pay child support for. In the years since he has dated intermittently but mostly just focused on work, rising to the rank of Sergeant. He's on better terms with his ex wife these days, a decade giving them both perspective. Sometimes they meet for lunch. Mostly they meet at the kids' games.
|
|
