Modest beginnings

I won this farm as a booby prize on a game show when I was 15. Kids on Naboo are expected to start their careers at a ridiculously young age; they're allowed to change when they're older, of course, and often do, but they get an early start.

This is because of a (wholly unproven) Naboo superstition that the Naboo are unusually susceptible to senility in their middle age. You must start working as soon as possible so that you can build up a small personal fortune and/or pay hefty taxes towards a happy retirement. After age 40 or so, your brain deteriorates and you begin to get silly.

That's what we were taught as kids, but there's never been any scientific data to support or even suggest this myth of early-onset dementia. Naboo brains are physiologically no different from any other humans', although many adult Naboo still cling to the tradition as if they really believed it to be true. Perhaps they do.

Of course, it is all just a scam meant to trick Naboo youngsters into developing the kind of work ethic that would grind an older person into dust, so they can retire while they're still young enough to have some life in them, and old enough to appreciate it. And it works like a charm for most people. Even when children suspect trickery, they usually play along, because they can see the payoff.

Sadly, I couldn't. What I saw was a lot of fun to be had right away, and plenty of time to pay for it later. At the appalling age of 14, I had not yet chosen a vocation or ever held down any sort of regular paying job for more than a few weeks. My scholastic achievements had been unimpressive, and I lacked the creative talent to complement my, shall we say, artistic (i.e. disorganized) lifestyle. My parents were very worried.

Around that time, a very somber, pre-senile group of Naboo youths created a game show called Career Quest. (Naboo wit is directly proportional to age.) The winner would get a high-paying job at the Jedi temple on Coruscant. The loser would win a moisture farm on Tatooine. (Obviously, the game show's producers called in an elderly consultant to provide some irony.)

It was perfectly okay with me that I didn't win. I was happy to have a ready-made occupation handed to me. It wouldn't be very glamorous, but it wouldn't be too demanding, either.

So I thought. I was so wrong, but it all worked out eventually. I mended my mischievous ways and got the hang of moisture farming. Still, for many years, I would gaze into the night sky from time to time and wonder what my life would be like if I had won the grand prize.

I don't wonder any more. As it happens, my Career Quest opponent was still working for the Jedi, and surely killed, the day the Republic fell a dozen years ago. Soooo... yeah. I'm good.