The signs came early. When he was a mere two months old, Conrad looked his mother in the eye and said: "Mother, what is this powdered pap that you insist upon feeding me? Are you not aware that scientific studies have conclusively concluded that breast milk is better for the development of a child's body - in particular his nascent immune system - than powdered milk? Really, mother, I am most disappointed in you." His parents were so mortified by this pronouncement that his father spearheaded a movement to promote breast milk as the healthy alternative to powder for infants while his mother breast fed him for the next 12 years of his life.
Yes, Conrad was not to be an ordinary child.
When he was 11 years old, Conrad determined to acquire controlling interest in a series of lemonade stands throughout the city. In order to pay for the takeovers, he fired dozens of the children who had been squeezing the lemons and adding the sugar at many of the smaller stands, forcing those who remained to work harder. His coup de grace, however, was to centralize the lemon squeezing process, forcing stands in lesser corners of the city to accept and sell a watered-down product.
Some of the children who were out of jobs grumbled. "How am I supposed to learn about the value of money if I can't work at my own lemonade stand?" one of the children, Timmy Turner, complained. Conrad's response was blistering: "My employees are manipulative, thieving, low-life cry-babies who would drink the company bankrupt if I turned my back on them for two seconds. Besides...I think they all have learned a vital lesson about the value of money!"
It wasn't long before Conrad's economic activity caught the attention of his junior high school newspaper, The Salamander, which began to run articles on his emerging empire. Conrad shrugged the attention off. "Why should I worry about the prattling of ignorant, lazy, opinionated, inadequately toilet-trained, young leftist hacks?" Conrad stated.
Yet, worry he must have, for, in defiance of what was being written about him, Conrad started his own newspaper, The National Newt. He hired friends from his classes to staff the newspaper, and had a penchant for writing lengthy opinion pieces excoriating his junior high school and lamenting the fact that it wasn't more like American schools. Although the Newt was widely regarded as a vanity project, it did spur The Salamander to add new columnists and generally improve the quality of its writing. In any case, the Newt was a drain on Conrad's revenues, and he ultimately sold it at a loss.
Around this time, Conrad wrote a 1,200 page biography of his grade three English teacher, Mrs. Fratelli, called Angela Delany-Fratelli: Champion of Reading. "She was a giant among grade school teachers," Conrad would later explain, "the like of which we shall never see again." While generally lauded in the high school student press, critics were quick to point out that Conrad's comparisons of himself to his grade school teacher - especially when it came to vocabulary - were largely self-deluding. Despite his angry dismissal of this criticism, Conrad took it to heart, making the development of a large vocabulary a point of honour in his later life.
Unfortunately, the triumph of the publication of the biography was soon overshadowed by allegations that Conrad had given himself a $70 bonus out of the profits from the lemonade stands without first getting permission from his parents. "This is a non-issue," Conrad said with a wave of his hand. "I earned that money with all of the work I put into the lemonade business." Perhaps contradicting this position, he soon paid the money back. A subsequent investigation determined that, while Conrad's actions were unorthodox, he had earned the money and, anyway, since he returned it, it was no big deal, and he was grounded for a week. But, here, again, contradictions abound: his corporate tricycle was permanently grounded and papers from Mrs. Fratelli's class that he had jealously hoarded were unceremoniously thrown out without his permission.
The boy is father to the man. Anybody who wishes to understand Conrad's current...difficulties, his greed, his overwhelming arrogance, his absolute sense of protected privilege, would do well to carefully scrutinize his formative years.