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If you really want to hear about it, the first think
you'll probably want to know is how my uncle had to
take me in, what part of the Shire I was born in and
who all my lousy hobbit relatives are, and all that
Red Book of Westmark kind of crap, but I really don't
feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the
second place, my hobbit parents would have about two
hemorrhages apiece if I told you all that genealogy
stuff about the. They're really quite touchy about that
kind of thing. Besides, I'm not going to tell you my
whole goddamn autobiography or anything. I'll just tell
you about this crazy madman stuff that happened to me
after Uncle Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday, when he
wandered off leaving me with Bag End and this old ring
he'd found on his travels. That was when I had my adventures,
Gollum wound up chewing off my ring and my ring finger
(which hurt like a bastard, let me tell you), after
which I got pretty run down and had to come out here
to the Grey Havens and take it easy.
Where I want to start telling aboutis the day I left
Rivendell, which I went to after a bunch of Black Riders
came looking for that crummy old ring and kindof chased
me and a few of my friends out of the Shire. Rivendell
is this elven city that's in Middle Earth. You've probably
heard of it. You've probably seen the ads, anyway. They
advertise in about a thousand town journals, always
showing some hot-shot elf lord on a horse jumping over
a fence while shooting an arrow. Like as if all you
ever did at Rivendell was play polo and practice archery
or something. I was pretty sick when I arrived, since
those damned Black Riders had stabbed me with their
stupid Morgul blade, but I spent three weeks recovering
in Rivendell and never saw a horse or a bow anywhere
near the place. And underneath the picture, it always
says: "Since the Second Age, we have been molding young
elves with the skills of magic needed to defend Middle
Earth." Strictly for the crebain. They don't do any
damn more molding at Rivendell than they do at any other
elven enclave. And I didn't meet anybody there that
was magical in the least. Maybe two elves. If that many.
And they probably came to Rivendell that way.
Anyway, when I left Rivendell, it was with this group
calling themselves the Fellowship of the Ring. I was
the goddamn ringbearer of the Fellowship. Very big deal.
I was practically their goddamn leader, if you want
to know the truth. We were supposed to be going to Mordor
so I could toss the ring in a volcano, only when they
asked me to decide which way to go, I picked the mines
of Moria. The other members of the Fellowship later
ostracized the hell out of me for that decision, because
that was where our sad old wizard Gandalf fell off a
bridge....