Sean laughs and rubs the back of his neck, because Steve's got him to rights on that one. "Weeeell, I might have been looking down, you know, sending a few messages to fellows. Usually when I step outside, there's nothing too exciting going on, so it's a safe place to stick my nose in my phone and stare down. But I always look up now before I blunder out and into some sorta stand-off."

Public school then, though it sounds like he had a hard time of it. Sean nods a little, remembers stories his ma told him about how it was when she was young. "And not going would have put you in a far worse state in the end. I had a great uncle who was sick a lot. He never got an education, and since he couldn't do a lot of the real physical jobs, there wasn't much he could do. He got lucky, and the family helped take care of him but... ma always said it ate at him, living off other people's paychecks. There's nothing more important than feeling like the stuff you have is your own."

It's why he can stand living in the places he's lived, and doing the jobs he does. At least he's taking care of himself. At least that's his work that's paying for things, and keeping himself fed and clothed.

"What were your folks like?" Most of the stuff Sean read only talked about the jobs they had, and how they died. But that's not who a person is, that's just what they did, and what the end was.